


From Sky's Edge at the Horizon to the Streets of Brooklyn That We Call Home

by TigressJade



Series: A Shot in the Dark and a Shield Edged With Light [1]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Agent Carter (TV) Spoilers!, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And a Curiosity Problem, BAMF Bucky Barnes, BAMF Peggy Carter, Back in the SSR, Badass SHIELD Agents, Brooklyn, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Captain America: The First Avenger, Department X, Department X literally breaks the ice, F/M, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, From Russia With Love - Freeform, Howard Stark Has A Heart, Howard Stark has a variety of true colors, London, M/M, Meet-Cute, Mission Unstoppable, Multi, Mutual Pining, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Steve Rogers, SHIELD, Steve Rogers Feels, Surprise Meet-Cute, The Author Regrets Nothing, The Howling Commandos Return, To Tease Their Commanding Officers, True Love's Kiss, VE Day, Victory Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 19:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3261476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigressJade/pseuds/TigressJade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU.  Steve Rogers is discovered in 1945 by the Russians and held behind the Soviet line as WWII continues to rage.  An invariable mistake leads to a quick escape enacted by the one person who has always managed to get Captain America out of trouble, with a well-placed right hook and a sniper's careful eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Sky's Edge at the Horizon to the Streets of Brooklyn That We Call Home

**Author's Note:**

> Just a few quick things. There are spoilers for Captain America - The First Avenger, Captain America - The Winter Soldier, and for the Agent Carter TV show. There is a larger note at the end of this fic along with some pertinent footnotes.
> 
> Happy Reading! :)

 

                    

 

 

 

Bucky doesn’t know why he starts noticing the man in the fedora who takes the train every day from the Queens stop, the same train Bucky takes to return for Basic every single day. The man is has greying hair and a fine coat, tailored in the same style the local doctors wore to make house calls. The type that had just enough room to fit glasses, cigars, and a strong pair of gloves for when the weather turned to a near biting cold.

Bucky thought they may have been his church clothes.

The man always has this sorrowful calm about him, that says he’s seen the worst the world can offer a person and nothing else can ever compare, could scare him nearly as much as the things he’s already seen. Bucky had seen that look on many of the elderly over the years. New York was a tough town and sometimes the mean streets took from a person more than they gave back.

Point was, this guy looked like he’d already been put through the shredder and Bucky supposed he may be having trouble finding work because of his age. Employers were picky, they wanted strong, agile young men that could do the hauling, digging, and whatever else needed doing.

Older men tended to get pushed aside for younger, stronger prospects.

The day the man asks Bucky, in a very distinct German accent, if he can sit beside him on the crowded train, he’s more or less taken by surprise. In his mind this man had always been a silent part of the landscape during the morning ride back to the base. Now the illusion had been shattered and Bucky had to wonder if he’d even been in the city all that long. People were leaving Europe in crowds with the war going on, so maybe this man was one of those people who’d just fled the violence and the sadness Bucky had seen was more homesickness than anything else.

“You lookin’ for work?” Bucky asked the man, who turned to look at him in mild surprise. “There’s a company on 7th Avenue that‘s lookin’ ta hire this week. You could try there.”

The man offered him a light smile.

“I already have one” the man replied, speech still colored by a deep German accent, “but I will thank you for the concern.”

“Hmm” Bucky said with a curt nod and went back to staring out the window of the car.

“I take it you are not looking anymore yourself, now that you are in the military” the man surmises.

“You’d be right” Bucky responded.

“You must be nervous, going out to fight over there” the man said.

Bucky almost turned to glare at the man, because it sounded like he was calling him a coward, but restrained himself. It didn’t matter that he only wanted to hear those words from someone like his mother or Steve. This man was German, may very well have seen things over there that no living person should ever have to. It was too possibly true for Bucky to instigate something over it.

“No, I can take whatever they’re gonna give me” Bucky admitted. _I’m more worried about what Steve’s gonna do when I’m gone._

“Forgive me if I overstep, but you always seem concerned about something when you ride every morning” the man said what sounded like an apology to Bucky’s ears.

Bucky sighed.

“I’ve got someone I’m leaving behind and I don’t know if they’ll be able to make it without me there.”

“That is troubling” the man told him in an understanding tone. “These are uncertain times for all.”

“You’re tellin’ me” Bucky muttered.

“That was a better answer than most young men give when I ask them” the man confessed. “Usually they want to go chase women or kill Nazis. You however, that does not seem to be how it is with you.”

“Wouldn’t be goin’ at all if I didn’t hafta” Bucky said honestly. “I’ve got ‘nuff to do here without having to ship out an’ leave it all undone ‘til I get back.”

“That sounds like quite a burden” the man replied.

“It’s not, I just don’t wanna leave people,” _Steve_ , his mind added, “that’re dependin’ on me.”

Then Bucky turned to the man and looked him straight in the eyes.

“M’not foolin’ myself. I _know_ I won’t be able ta get out of it” he told the man, Brooklyn accent sounding thicker even to his own ears, “but I can’t help feelin’ it anyways.”

“I’ll tell you what I tell all the young men in uniform I talk to” the man said, visibly straightening. “When you go over there and see what you’re going to see, don’t forget what’s important. What’s in here” he points at Bucky’s chest, at his heart, for emphasis, “don’t let what happens change you so much that you no longer remember you are human.”

“You know then” Bucky prompted, “what it’s like over there.”

The man nodded.

“The Nazis invaded their own country first” he stated in hardened tone, “took their own people hostage in their path to power. You won’t like what you see and sometimes, you won’t feel that you are human anymore. The trick is remembering that you are and that you have something left to come back to when it is over and done with.”

Bucky nodded and offered the man a tight smile.

“You a teacher or somethin’, with the way you talk I’d say ya were used ta explaining things that people are expectin’ or don’t like hearing.”

“I work with a number of young people” the man admits. Then he looks up as the train slows. “This is my stop then. Remember what I said, soldier, it is important to keep your humanity even in the face of inhumanity.”

Bucky nods, gives him a small salute and watches the man disembark. 

 

* * *

_“…it is important to keep your humanity even in the face of inhumanity.”_

 

Bucky tries to remember those words when he’s at the front with the 107th.

He doesn’t piss on the corpses of dead German soldiers like some of the others do.

He doesn’t shoot a dying man twice if he’s already been disarmed, no matter how hot his blood’s running.

He avoids the women in any of the war torn villages whenever they gain ground on the Italian front, because he’s determined not to do anything that would disappoint Steve. Steve who would say it wasn’t right, because buying them a drink and fucking them would be taking advantage, when Bucky damned well knew those women were being used as a distraction to keep American soldiers from running roughshod and picking fights with any men that were left.

Even when he knew if he ever got home he’d never be able to tell Steve everything, because there were necessities during war that a man couldn’t understand unless he’d been through it, Bucky was determined to try and live up to this heroic image Steve had of him. Steve who’d picked all those fights with guys over respecting women and would get himself beaten bloody by refusing to back down from doing what was right. A tendency that, if not for Steve’s consistent letters, would make Bucky worry all the more that his best friend was bleeding out in a back alley without having anyone there to protect him and patch him up afterward.

He contemplates these things as he’s sitting in camp yet again after a day of tramping through the underbrush and fighting like a dog against more ground troops.

“Hey Barnes, you look like you could use a drink” Dugan’s voice called out, shaking Bucky from his thoughts.

“Seein’ as how that moonshine of yours could strip the paint offa those tanks over there, I’ll think I’ll pass” Bucky let the remark settle in the air as he moved to take his disassemble his gun and give the mechanism a quick once-over. “Need to be able to shoot straight tomorrow when we move out.”

“Your loss Sergeant” Dugan shot back. “Thought you were going to prove to us you aren’t a lightweight.”

Bucky shook his head, lips curling up slightly at the challenge.

“When we get there” he insisted. “I’ll table every one of you. If you can keep up after two good pints, I might just name my morning headache after you.”

“You’re all heart, Barnes” Dugan chuckled, putting a hand over his chest dramatically. 

 

* * *

 

Bucky feels strong in that moment, even as worrying flames lick across the ground floor below them. He’s standing there with Steve, feeling the soberest he has in days, staring down Dr. Zola, the German scientist who’d been methodically working to take him apart from the inside and Johann Schmidt, the current leader of the Nazi division who’d taken him captive. Bucky’s struggling to keep himself upright against the steel railing, watching as, for the first time Steve is able to hold his own against someone who should be stronger than him.

“Hook him right, Stevie” Bucky’s murmur is nearly inaudible as the sound of explosions edge closer to them.

Steve holds the shield in front of him as a buffer against Schmidt’s fist.

“Don’t take your eyes away…”

Steve thinks fast the tries to go for the service weapon in his belt, only to have it knocked away by a second blow from Schmidt.

”Damn…move to the side and go for the…”

Bucky breaks off as he watches Steve overpower Schmidt with a solid power kick using both feet in a full body jump, then socks him one with his right fist.

At that point Zola’s gotten nervous and pulled a lever separating the different parts of the metal walkway that Steve and Schmidt are standing on, putting an end to their impromptu cage match. A part of Bucky’s mind takes time to enjoy seeing the nervous, nearly horrified expression on Zola’s face as Schmidt tears his skin away to reveal a mutated red skull-like countenance. The rest of him is feeling as shocked and unnerved as Steve and Zola appear to be.

It takes Bucky a few minutes to realize that Schmidt’s statement means that he and Steve have had some similar experiment performed on them, and Bucky feels a sliver of worry curl itself into his gut at the thought of Steve experiencing the same mutating side effects that Schmidt had.

“You don’t have one of those, do you?” Bucky asks. He doesn’t get an answer right away as he and Steve are too busy shuffling toward an upper level exit.

Bucky makes it across a metal beam to the adjacent platform across from them, but feels panic well up in him as the beam breaks under him just as he manages to grasp the rail surrounding the exit.

“Bucky you’ve gotta leave, this place is gonna-”

“Not without you!” Bucky shouts back, affirming his position on the subject.

Steve’s expression says that he knows he’s beat, knows Bucky’s serious about not walking through that door without him. So he bends the rail away to give himself some space, backs up to get some leverage and then runs full speed toward the rail Bucky is leaning on, waiting for him.

Bucky readies himself in a split second and standing on second bar of railing so he can reach out to grab Steve. Somehow Steve’s newly improved agility allows him to move just within Bucky’s arm range. Bucky grips his friend’s arm and waist, using the rail as support and pulls Steve over and in. His hands never breaking the force of their grip as he holds onto his oldest friend and one of the most precious figures in his world.

Bucky narrows his eyes, as he lets go of Steve, who tries to catch his breath looking up at Bucky in a way that says he’s surprised he survived the jump, and moves a hand up to touch Steve’s face. He traces the skin carefully and discovers with satisfaction, that his friend’s face is still whole and real.

“Least you didn’t get a look like that guy’s” Bucky stated lightly.

Steve snorted as a small smile appeared on his face. Then he righted himself and put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder.

“Let’s get moving, Bucky.”

“Aye Aye Captain America, sir” Bucky grins carelessly.

“So it’s safe to say you saw the films then?”

“More’n that. There’re comics about you now, pal.”

“How cheesy are they?”

“Pretty damned. They have you saving cats from trees in Nazi Germany, choking Hitler three times, and breaking the hearts of all the Nazi women you come across.”

“Could be worse” Steve said, putting an arm over Bucky’s shoulder, leading him through the door.

“You mean like that song they wrote about you?” Bucky asked teasingly and Steve could feel the blush well up on the tips of his ears and the back of his neck. “Are you here to save the American Way, Steve? And bring justice to all of the patriotic guys and gals in Europe?”

“Fuck, you’re not going to let me live that down, are you?”

“Never” Bucky confirmed. “And watch that pretty little mouth of yours, Rogers. What would your Ma say?”

“Did you learn that from that no good Barnes kid?”

Bucky snorted.

“Your Ma liked me.”

“Yeah she did” Steve admitted, his eyes taking on a wistful gleam, “but she’d still’ve washed your mouth out for it.”

“Might’ve been worth it for another taste of that famous apple pie afterward.”

 

* * *

 

After days of marching, Bucky found himself huddled safely inside Steve’s-Captain America’s tent, bundled in as many blankets as it had been stocked with, and on top of that Steve’s military jacket lay draped over Bucky’s shoulders. Steve had dived right into his new role as the mother hen of the pair of them and done everything in his power to make Bucky feel comfortable and safe after finding him tied to Zola’s table.

Instead of dragging Bucky to the medical tent, Steve insisted on going back and bringing one of them back to his to see to Bucky. In fact, after he’d gotten Bucky patched up, he’d made sure that any of the men who’d had to ride on or in the tanks because of serious injuries were seen to inside the spare bunks they’d been given.

“Those men need care, Buck after what Hydra did to them. Don’t want ‘em thinking they can just walk it off, so m’gonna make sure of it” Steve had insisted with his usual stubborn edge.

Bucky snorted.

“Y’mean like you used to?”

“That was different, it was only a few hits and I had you to watch my back” Steve replied evasively.

“More than a few, punk.”

“Jerk. Those guys always had lousy aim anyway.”

“That’s why you came back extra bruised with both eyes blackened sometimes” Bucky retorted, curling further into his blankets for warmth.

Steve seemed to notice and came up to sit beside Bucky, wrap his arms around him and pull him closer.

“Well that’s somethin’, you’re hotter’n a damn furnace, Rogers.”

Steve chuckled lightly.

“Now I can pay you back for all those times you kept me warm” he said.

“I can live with that” Bucky answered, reveling in his new found heat source and marveling at the fact that he felt safer than he had in weeks. “Easier to make sure you stay outta trouble if you’re close by.”

“Only if your sorry ass doesn’t get there first” Steve drowsed.

Steve was here.

Bucky wasn’t one of Zola’s lab rats anymore, and despite the experiments that’d been done on him, he was going to live. More importantly so was Steve, with this amount of body heat the winter chill was never going to have an effect on him again, and Bucky wouldn’t have to worry that he’d stop breathing in the middle of the night.

 

* * *

  

“Look, I know we got off on the wrong foot and I don’t want to be the reason things go sour between you ‘n Steve. Lemme make it up to ya” Bucky said after he’d finally managed to run into Agent Carter

She eyed him speculatively.

“No remarks about how a woman like me shouldn’t be in a place like this?” she tested his reaction.

“No Ma’am, nothing like that” Bucky answered with a self-deprecating sigh.

“You didn’t do a very good job of teaching him how to talk to women, you know” Peggy replied with an amused expression.

“I tried, he’s just better at being a wise guy than he is at chatting up the dames” Bucky replied with a bit of chagrin. “He really can’t dance, you know. Never got the chance to teach him before I got my notice.”

“We’ll have to fix that, won’t we?” she murmured turning away from him. “I understand you’ve got a mission to prepare for. Don’t let me keep you.”

“Yes Ma’am” Bucky said, taking it as a dismissal.

“And James?” In the midst of a turn, Bucky started at the sound of her voice speaking his given name.

He looked up to see Agent Carter looking back at him with a neutral expression.

“Be careful.”

Bucky nodded, giving her a proper salute.

“Yes Ma’am, I will. I’ll be sure to bring Captain America back in one piece.”

Then he turned to leave and heard her chuckle lightly in response.

Bucky smiled. If Steve was truly stuck on her, then Bucky could see why. Peggy Carter was an impressive woman underneath everything else, and he was sure glad she’d been there to watch Steve’s back when he couldn’t.

 

* * *

  

Months later Bucky doesn’t remember the face of the man on the train, only his words about remembering what was important and being human despite the killing seem to linger. It isn’t until he sees a photo of the man in Steve’s file that his mind jars into some sense of clarity, of memory, that he realizes who the man actually was.

The German scientist. The one who invented the serum they’d injected Steve with.

The man who’d apparently picked _his_ Steve of all people out of a crowd and saw what he was truly worth. It felt strange, though slightly vindicating, knowing that this man had seen in the same things in Steve that Bucky had. Although Bucky’s reasons for seeing how good Steve truly was sprang from feelings that were of a deeper nature.

Ironically Bucky hadn’t told Steve about the conversation he’d had with the man on the train, because he’d been too exhausted that night after he got home from basic training to even think straight. Afterward Bucky had only seen the man a few times from other end of a train car, before the man, Dr. Abraham Erskine, had stopped riding the rail at the usual time. At the time Bucky had just assumed the man’s work hours had changed and nearly forgotten him altogether.

Until it came time for Bucky to ship out and leave Steve behind in Brooklyn. Then Erskine’s words about remembering what was waiting for Bucky at home after the war ended came swiftly back to him.

Bucky still couldn’t decide if he should be angry with man for changing his best friend in such drastic way, or be grateful that the serum was now there to preserve Steve’s health. Enough so that if the war went their way, Steve’d actually live to see old age. Something that certainly wouldn’t’ve been possible in the past with how fragile Steve had been.

Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Steve had volunteered himself for a dangerous experiment on the off chance he could join Bucky at the front. Honestly, Steve’s now healthy body and accelerated healing were two of the only things that kept Bucky from having nightmares about all the ways the serum injection could have gone horribly horribly wrong.

“I still miss the little guy” Bucky murmured to himself under his breath, “but Steve is Steve and I’ll follow him to the end of the line. Nothin’ else matters so long as we survive all the shit Schmidt and Zola have got left to throw at us.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky falls.

He crashes to the world of ice and snow below, knowing that nothing else matters so long as Steve is safe.

His world becomes a blur of blue, white, then black…only to seep into red, red on swirling white surrounding him, red on brown uniforms that drag him away across a field of white, and finally red on silver as he tries to fight his way to freedom from ungentle hands.

 

* * *

 

Steve turns over the dog tag with Bucky’s name on it in his hand as he takes another drink.

The Commandos had turned in to sleep off their hangovers a good half hour ago, but Steve keeps going, keeps trying to find the limit that will finally break through his heedless tolerance level and allow the alcohol to finally cloud his mind of the images of Bucky falling to his death. Steve’s hand hanging there only two inches too late to keep the most important person in his life from leaving it forever.

Steve only half listens to what Peggy says when she comes to sit by him in the bombed out bar. The words forcibly sink themselves into his mind anyway. Steve knows that if he had a choice he’d’ve chosen Bucky’s life over his, would’ve taken that fall in his place.

He drinks what’s left of the bar’s larder and finds he’s still sober.

Falls asleep with drink number sixty-eight on his lips. The tears fall by themselves at that point and Steve wakes every two hours to the sound of Bucky’s scream as he fell and his own voice calling Bucky’s name as he’s ripped away from him.

Steve knows how he feels and for once doesn’t give a flying fuck about what the church says, what they say god says about how he feels. He kept this from Bucky and he still lost him twice. He almost regrets not telling Bucky, except for the part where Bucky would probably have punched him in the face or stopped sharing a cot with him and probably shared with Dum Dum or something, if he wasn’t already on his way to demand that he be reassigned to another team immediately.

That would’ve killed Steve.

But this. This is what’s worse. Why he knows he can’t and won’t keep flirting with Peggy.

It isn’t right. He can’t even go home, because Bucky’s parents are there, his family and Brooklyn isn’t a place he can go back to. It doesn’t matter that Steve will never lose another fight, never be left bleeding in a back alley again, for all that it didn’t matter, when the faded silhouette of the man who used to finish the fight, patch him up and make him feel like he still mattered in this world on bad days, would chase him for the rest of his life.

Bucky’s face would haunt his dreams and a part of Steve, the bitter part, would rather face the barrel end of a gun knowing that this was the end, than to forever be reminded of how he failed to have Bucky’s back the time when he needed it most.

 

* * *

 

Steve manages to force the Valkyrie down, but the Red Army has been making headway throughout Europe. They have a tentative truce with the Nordic countries that allows for exploratory expeditions into the North Atlantic, even as their forces press forward to the invasion of Germany, to locate and secure the relic that intelligence reports purport Johann Schmidt to have used to power and sustain Hydra’s advanced technology. Stalin’s objective is to prepare the world for communism and further their domination of the region before the United States has time to recover from fighting a war on two different fronts.

The expedition to retrieve the artifact proves fruitless, but returns with measurable success as the team has been able to procure another find. The coordinates used to infer the location of Schmidt’s mystery gem had lead them to the wreckage of an aircraft bearing Hydra’s emblem and containing the remains of its last known pilot, information that is confirmed by the interception of the last known transmission between Captain Steven Rogers and Agent Margaret Carter of the American Strategic Scientific Reserve.

Captain America is discovered in the Arctic early in March of 1945 by a group of very intrigued Soviet geologists and intelligence agents, and brought back to the Motherland to be studied and perhaps thawed. The KGB quickly alter their plans after it is reported that the subject has a steady heartbeat and they have him moved to a facility that is equipped to rehabilitate and reprogram him to serve their purposes without question.

He is identified under the code: Subject C.

The facility is quiet at night and when the subject finally does wake from his weeks long sleep, there are only a few personal able to answer the call to put him down when he starts thrashing in his restraints.

Subject C’s cries wake another patient, Subject B, who’s nearly drugged out of his mind. Subject B can barely find the effort to get off the bed, finding the room empty as the remaining personnel had left him for the moment. He thinks he knows that voice but it’s difficult to move more than a few feet.

Then he hears something he can’t ignore, something unquestionably worth the effort to move and move fast.

“BUCKY!

“He fell-he-he’s falling!”

“Grab-just grab my hand-!”

 

* * *

 

Subject B’s legs move as his eyes sweep over the still blurry room. He feels his head clear, as his mind tries to catch up with the rest of him. Adrenaline pulses through his body as it shifts through unwarranted muscle memory.

For some reason his left hand is stronger than his right and he uses it to pry open the metal rings around his arms and legs that are keeping him from getting up and moving off the table he’s been set on.

When Subject B is free of restraints, a gun and a syringe are in his hand before he even knows what he’s doing.

_…I had-had ‘em on the ropes._

His hands automatically pull the magazine release to check if the gun is loaded. When he realizes it is, he shifts the magazine and clicks it back into place, satisfied.

_...important…humanity in the face of…remember you…are…human…_

His brain doesn’t even register that the weight of his left arm and the new and alien feeling it has until later.

The team of scientists and their accompanying agents don’t even sense his presence until he’s already upon them, his aim as true as it’s ever been. Women personnel fall victim to substance in the syringe, while the soldiers and the doctors aren’t so lucky. If he hasn’t put a bullet in them, he’s snapped their necks with remarkably swift precision on his way to get to the blonde man lying on the bed. The one Subject B knows he wasn’t quick enough in getting to, because he’s already falling into a drug induced unconsciousness where he lies.

“Bucky” the man repeats blearily as his blue eyes begin to cloud, lids fall to half-mast. “I had ‘m…on t’ropes.”

“You did” Subject B says without thinking, not sure of why he did so. He only knows that this man is important. His life matters. He is…to be protected.

_You’ll look after him James, when I’m gone?_

_I can’t leave him all alone…with no one to care for him._

_My Stevie._

_Stevie… **Steve**._

Subject B blinked. He somehow knew that this man was called Steve. That he is someone Subject B would protect with his life, though he doesn’t quite remember why.

“Should be smaller. What happened?” he asks, trying to shake the man, whose hair he remembers is light and blonde.

_I joined the army._

“Did it hurt?” Subject B asked the empty room.

_A little._

“Is it permanent?”

_So far._

He pulls out of his own drug induced trance long enough to see the red lines on the screen near the blonde man’s bed. The idea of this man hooked to these machines fills him with concern and anger he can’t yet process.

Subject B pulls back, feeling the effects of his wakefulness on his body, his stomach to be more precise. He empties its contents in the nearest corner and then searches the bodies, divesting them of anything that could help him make it through the endless corridors. His mind tells him there has to be an end, a door that leads out to the beyond.

One of the guards had a uniform that could almost fit him. After he strips the body, he uses the coat to hide all of the knives and ammunition he can get his hands, slipping each of them quietly into the empty pockets.

Then, with some difficulty, Subject B dresses blonde man on the bed in the next biggest military uniform he can locate. What bullets don’t fit in Subject B’s pocket are relocated to the other man’s, Steve’s, coat.

“What’re you doing?” Steve asks, though his voice is slurred.

“Getting you out” Subject B replies quietly, before he pulls Steve over his shoulder, and lifts him up from the back. His is mind working off of the one finite concept that Steve is to be protected at all costs.

After eyeing the tubes warily he disconnects them from Steve’s body, and has just enough piece of mind to squeeze the blonde’s stomach until the gag reflex kicks in and everything that was inside it litters the floor below them. Steve, starts to regain some sense of awareness after this, enough it seems to tighten his hand around Subject B’s shoulder as it supports his dead weight.

Subject B only had to drop Steve to the floor twice when he’s forced to gun down anyone who bars their way. Fifteen minutes later any remaining sentries are dead.

The final victim is the head scientist in whose office lays a very specific looking object, rounded at the edges, coated with red, white and blue, and centered with distinct white star. Subject B notices when Steve grabs for it.

The object, a shield his mind supplies, feels infinitely familiar to him. He tests it and finds that tremendously firm. Figures it could be of use to him if the ammunition runs low.

He sighs and works a cord around the handles so he can tie it around Steve’s left arm, which has been slipped securely over his shoulder for support.

Grenades can also be useful, he remembers, and there are several lying amidst the dead bodies of his opponents. Subject B uses them to break through the wired fencing keeping him in and another two to topple a couple of sentry towers standing adjacent. Then he disposes of the empty shell casings and hitches Steve up on his back, grips the blonde’s waist to keep him steady and settled the long legs around his around his own.

Steve’s heavy, but Subject B finds movement is easier now that he doesn’t have to drag his prone form along, still running off of a chemical induced rush of adrenaline.

Subject B heads for the shelter of a forest of trees, he knows this type of terrain well and what he’s looking for, which he finds after three miles of making his way through the thickets. The worst of the briars he wades through stick in his arms and Steve’s, but he manages to avoid the wolves this way, so strategically this proves to be worth the pain and the effort.

The war had left many farms abandoned, if not desecrated as many of the inhabitants had been killed by the advancing German soldier’s prelude to the blockade of Stalingrad. Subject B leaves Steve lying in a dark corner out of sight and walks the perimeter for ten minutes before he is satisfied. His reaction to the old farm house is similar, though he is sure to bring Steve inside and find blankets to pile on him, wary of the fact that the blonde’s blood seemed to run hot. Subject B worried that Steve might already be running a fever.

Gunfire in the distance startles him and Subject B surmises that he and Steve are still too unprotected, too out in the open here.

The farm house has supply sacks that he uses to hold his cache of ammunitions and what preserves he can find in the abandoned larder. Then he bundles Steve, who is still slipping in and out of consciousness, blankets and all, onto his back again, and bustles out into the cold night.

Subject B doesn’t stop until he finds the ruins of a battlefield a few miles later. He thinks it’s fortunate that the drugs his captors gave him have allowed for him to run this long without needing to eat or sleep. Though he’s slowly coming down from the high and feels the weight of it wearing on him.

The German tank will be a cold place to sleep, but he knows, a strategically safer one than a civilian residence or the open wilderness.

Subject B sleeps on and off for three days straight bundled in the warmth that is Steve, careful to wake from his doze to give Steve water and some of the vegetable preservatives. He only takes a swig himself, once Steve has had his share.

 

* * *

 

On the fourth day Subject B wakes to find that he knows his own name, it wasn’t Subject B, it was Subject B… James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038. But he knows instinctively that he went by Bucky, not James. The same name Steve had called him that first night.

His head felt clearer than it had in days and not only that, but he glanced over to see Steve was finally waking into consciousness.

After a few moments the blonde’s dazed expression changes and he’s looking back at Bucky with shocked blue eyes.

“ _Bucky_...is that…is it really is you? Please tell me it’s really you, because otherwise I’m going crazy and-” Steve babbles, looking as though he’s about to start spilling tears from those baby blues of his. He holds out a hand to squeeze and hold Bucky’s shoulder, as if to make sure he’s real and in front of him.

Bucky uses that same arm to pull Steve into a tight hug.

“S’me Stevie” he breathes into the blonde’s neck. “They shot me up but good, but I’m here.”

“How’re you here, Bucky?”

Bucky shook his head.

“Somethin’ Zola did to me must’ve stuck, because that fall definitely should’ve killed me.”

“We’ll worry about it later” Steve tells him, as he attempts to wipe his eyes of any evidence of tears. “I’m just so glad that you’re alive, Buck.”

“Same here after that hell we just went through” Bucky replied, rubbing the back of his neck to get the crick out of it.

“Back there you, you made them stop whatever it was they were doing to me. Thanks for having my six.”

Bucky felt a smile tilt the corner of his lips.

“Always, punk. Couldn’t let ‘em get to you,” he answered. “Strange thing is I couldn’t even remember my own name when I came to in that place”

“You certainly remembered me, jerk” Steve said with small smile that could almost have been teasing, if he hadn’t still looked like he was about to cry. “I’m so glad you’re not dead, Buck. I-I didn’t do so well after you fell. I let some things get to me.”

Bucky blinked.

Steve’s expression looked almost guilty for some reason he couldn’t fathom. Then he remembered what that look signified. Steve could be a reckless punk when it came down to it and that look meant he’d done something near suicidal out of pain. Like the time he’d run off after Sarah Roger’s funeral and been missing for hours before Bucky’d finally caught up with him, lying in a city park coughing and shivering.

“You did something stupid, didn’t you? Don’t tell me you failed a mission and Hydra got you” Bucky pressed him.

Steve shook his head.

“No, unless those men back there were actually Hydra” Steve answers, being deliberately vague. “I just maybe wasn’t thinking straight for a bit.”

Bucky snorts and he shifts one of his shoulders back to allay the stiffness that’s built up. Now the drugs have fully worn off, he’s starting to feel some definite pain in the region.

He stops, looks down at it and realizes the thing that’s been placed there now isn’t his arm at all. Understands suddenly why it’s felt so much heavier than it should be, it feels dead cold.

Steve notices too, glancing at the false arm with a stunned expression, while Bucky’s blanches with renewed horror. His relief at being able to move it when he’d thought it had been nearly frostbitten is gone completely. No, his left arm has been replaced with one of pure metal and some of the pain he now feels is actually from a phantom limb.

He feels a scream nearly erupt from his chest without warning, but Steve’s mind seems to have come back to him faster than Bucky thought it would, because Steve is there holding a hand to his mouth.

“Not here, Buck. I know you want to, but we can’t risk those doctors catching us” Steve whispers soothingly in his ear, in a tone reminiscent of the one Bucky had used to calm Steve whenever he had an asthma attack, moving forward and rubbing a hand down Bucky’s back soothingly. “Just take a deep breathe. We’ll figure this out together. You have _no_ idea how glad I am that you’re alive, and the arm…the arm doesn’t change anything.”

Bucky nods silently, not trusting his voice, and carding a hand through his regulation hair-cut, as he tries to hide how much Steve saying that goes straight to his heart. He’s glad Steve stopped him from crying out, because he doesn’t want to give them away, is sharply aware that there will be pursuers on their tail. Russian intelligence agents who would think nothing of dragging them back to that hell and doing whatever they deemed necessary to get the secret of the super-soldier serum. Bucky would just be an extra lab rat to the scientific puzzle that Steve would provide them with.

“I can’t-don’t remember everything that happened to us and…are you…do you know where the hell we are?” Steve asked looking around at tank again. “I just remember shooting and…you getting us out of there somehow.”

“Yeah, those guys won’t be comin’ after us” Bucky grimaced. “Had it in my head that I had’ta keep your ass safe.” He exhaled deeply. “So I damn well took down anyone that might’ve stopped us.”

Steve’s eyes went wide, though his expression shifted and it seemed he wasn’t horrified at Bucky for what he’d done to survive, but for him.

“If it came down to it, I’d’ve done the same” Steve admitted. “After everything, after Hydra, Zola, I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back from taking down anyone who would’ve treated you like as less than a person and thrown you to their pet scientists to take apart. _Especially_ people who claimed to be our allies.”

Bucky’s lip turned up slightly.

“Didn’t think Captain America would ever cross that line with anyone except Schmidt.”

“Well you thought wrong” Steve huffed. “So do we know where they stashed us after pulling us out of the snow?”

“The soldiers who found me looked Russian, bastards, so I suspect it’s either Russia or Poland.” Bucky surmised. “I’m a little hazy on how and when they got me here, but I remember seeing something on the wall of a house I ducked into on the way here that was clearly in Russian. Even had a photograph of Stalin calling troops to the front. The way I see it is, Russia’s the only place right now in this whole region capable of having a base like that and holding it against the Germans.”

“So it’s a safe bet that’s probably where they would’ve kept us” Steve breathed. “We’re gonna need to scout out a map to hopefully get us a point of reference.”

“And food, a compass, and some better clothes” Bucky recounted the ever growing mental list in his head. “These rags I pinched us are gonna wear down at some point.”

“You know any Russian, Buck?” Steve asked thoughtfully, cutting through Bucky’s thoughts.

“Enough to get by” Bucky admitted. “My parents could speak it. So they taught it to me and the girls with Romanian.”

He grabbed for the canvas bag and showed Steve the purloined Russian uniforms with multiple forms of identification from the people he’d been forced to take down during their escape.

“If the war’s still on, we might be able to blend in provided we don’t meet up with any German artillery.”

“If you can play at being mute, I should be able ta convince ‘em that we’re Russian infantry” Bucky replied, then he glanced unconsciously down at his left arm. “Maybe enough to get us some food and a map s’long as these gloves manage to hide this bit of me. Cold tends to make it bite enough at the shoulder joint as it is.”

Steve nods, his eyes are sharper now, clearer in a way that convinces Bucky that the serum has completely driven the drugs from his system.

“Is this a bunker or a tank?” Steve asked, glancing around at the narrow metal walls surrounding them.

“Tank. From what I can tell this one belonged to the Germans” Bucky explained. “I got the food and supplies from that abandoned house I stopped into. Didn’t stay because even drugged outta god given my mind I knew it wasn’t safe when I heard gunshots. So I packed up, grabbed you and ran.”

“I’d’ve had the same reaction” Steve admitted, “with everything we’ve lived through it’d be hard not to just duck and run for cover.”

“Like you’ve ever done that in your life” Bucky snorted. “Anyway, even drugged outta my mind I knew that house would be the first place they looked” Bucky recounted. “This tank seemed less likely to draw their attention, seeing as how it’s still surrounded by dead Russians and Germans.”

“So the war’s still on then” Steve said lightly.

“Seems so.”

“Then we need to get to Allied territory, so we can make contact with Peggy and the SSR.”

Bucky sighed.

“Can’t head south. That means a heavily armed well-guarded border into Italy” Bucky surmises. “We’d never make it without meeting up with most of the Russian army along the way.”

Steve nods, his mouth pulled into a tight line.

“If we’re farther north than Moscow, then we should keep heading in that direction. We might encounter some friendlies in Sweden.”

Bucky rubs the back of his neck.

“Sweden’s neutral, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, we’d have to go through Finland to get there, but once we did then we’d be in neutral territory” Steve explained. “They’re more likely to ship us back to Uncle Sam than to the Germans or the Russians.”

Bucky thinks this over and nods approvingly.

“Good thinking, Steve. We’ll need some warmer clothes and a map, but anything’s better than waiting for them to catch us up.”

Then he looks down at the arm again and peers at it suspiciously.

“They were smart enough to make something like this. Someone on Stark’s level coulda messed with it” Bucky muses harshly.

Steve closes his eyes, tries to think of an answer, and can’t. He eyes Bucky’s arm thoughtfully and tries to look for anything out of place with his artist’s eye for detail, but doesn’t get very far.

Steve glances away at the cold metal walls around them, can hear as Bucky shifts his weight so that he’s next to him, so they can each give each other more warmth.

He turns to see Bucky settling his left arm at his side, folding it inward toward his chest.

“I dunno if” Steve starts to say, when a small square panel right about at Bucky’s elbow joints catches his eye. “Wait. Do that again.”

Bucky stares back at him incredulously.

“Your arm. Move it like that again, Bucky. I need to see something.”

Bucky takes in a breath and straightens his out his arm, taking care to do it slowly, before bending it again and bringing it to rest at curling inward toward his lower chest.

The panel doesn’t move like the rest of the joint does, its more of an adage, that isn’t quite as smoothly fit as the others.

“What’re you doing, Steve?”

“M’thinking about what you said and I think there’s something right about here” Steve informs him definitively.

They find something sharp in a nearly caved section of the tank and manage to pry the panel off Bucky’s arm. The panel has a device attached to it. It isn’t until they break off another panel from the same area that doesn’t have any similar devices tucked into it that they realize it’s some type of bug. Whether it’s for listening in or tracking, they aren’t sure, but after finding another one in the pit of Bucky’s arm they pack up and leave quickly and efficiently.

 

* * *

 

The road signs tell them there’s a town several kilometers to the left, which is where Bucky suggests they go, so they do, being careful to only skirt the main roads.

Between the two of them they manage to steal good clothing, a formerly framed map and a fractionally undamaged compass from the one empty house just on the outskirts of town. Steve wants to leave something in return for what they’ve stolen, but finds there’s nothing they can do without. He sighs and turns to follow Bucky as he leaves, refusing to compromise Bucky’s safety just to appease his own sense of guilt. They are in enemy territory and can’t afford to falter in the name of doing what they need to survive.

It’s always been that way with the two of them.

Steve flinches when he sees Bucky grip his metal arm with other hand, knowing that his friend is trying to hide the fact that his new limb still gives him pain. The sleeves of the purloined military coat manage to hide the distinct sheen of metal coming out of his shoulder, just as the pair of work gloves hide metallic scope of Bucky’s left hand from view.

During the next couple of weeks the two of them take cover in abandoned shacks and empty half-burned out farmhouses. Steve insists they steal only what they need to survive, which in his mind extends to any weaponry they find lying around. Bucky mostly only has to dip into their ammunition stores during that time. Twice to take out pursuers following their trail and once to discourage a bear from getting too close to their shelter.

There are rare instances when they are forced to be near civilians and edge a crowd. When that happens Bucky plays the part of the stoic soldier, while Steve is his silent, muscled partner. Most people leave them alone and they make sure to avoid actual military personnel when possible.

At one point they very nearly missed meeting up with a Russian artillery unit.

“That was close” Bucky said, breathing a sigh of relief as they watched the battalion march away at a distance.

Steve nods, still silently trying to calm his thrumming nerves.

_That was too close._

 

* * *

 

The Finnish border is a godsend and while avoiding any of the major checkpoints, while stumbling through some well-timbered backwoods, is difficult, they manage.

“Stalin’s getting pretty damn bold with all of this” Bucky whispers in Steve’s ear.

“It ain’t right” Steve mutters back.

“Can’t save the world, punk” Bucky answers, squeezing his shoulder lightly.

“No” Steve lets out a breath. “Doesn’t make it right.”

“I know” comes the quiet reply as they use a newly garnered map to regain their bearings.

After a few minutes of walking Steve broke the intermittent silence.

“Back in Russia I kept feeling like any minute they were going to realize who we were,” Steve admitted, glancing around at the wooded terrain just beyond them, “but then I’d see people fleeing in droves and realize that the war was still on. That the people around us were too worried for their own lives to even care who we were.”

“They’re suffering, same as everyone else” Bucky replied. “The group they turned us over to were probably understaffed as it was, that’s why I was able to take ‘em out so easily.”

“They’re still putting most of their manpower toward securing Italy and Germany.” Steve breathed. “Still fighting, like Peggy and the Commandos probably are.”

“We’ll get back to them, Steve. S’what we’re doing all this for” Bucky reminded him.

That night Steve finds Bucky’s shivering, not from the cold, but pain in his shoulder and, despite the cold he manages to massage the muscles into loosening up enough to lessen Bucky’s trembling.

 

* * *

 

Finland is a smaller country and it takes them less time to cross its more arboreal terrain.

Along the way they make the unexpected discovery that Finnish wolves, are as bad if not worse than Russian wolves. Surviving an encounter with two of them takes all of the survival tactics they’d learned in Brooklyn and Nazi Germany combined.

Bucky’s arm nearly locked up when he was forced to twist it into an odd position to restrain the smaller wolf from closing its jaw around his shoulder.

Eventually Bucky had gotten a clear shot when they’d tried to surround Steve, who’d gotten ahold of his shield and attempted to stun one of them with it.

“They always go for you, Cap” Bucky remarked passively as he emptied the shell casings. “They must know a good piece of red meat when they see it.”

Steve groaned in answer, wiping some of the blood off his face.

“You such a goddamn jerk sometimes.”

“You know it, punk” came the answer along with a flirtatious wink.

Steve smiled slightly.

This was the first time they’d snarked at each other like this above a whisper, without glancing around, wary of being overheard speaking in English and giving themselves away to their pursuers. After careful observation they’d discovered that English was spoken as prevalently as Finnish, Dutch, and Swiss here, so it wouldn’t be any cause for comment with the locals. It felt like they were slowly regaining more of the freedom they’d lost during their time spent as lab experiments for Russian scientists in a secret outpost.

That night they took shelter in an empty structure that Steve discovered was some type of hot spring bath house and ended up resting there for two days.

 

* * *

 

Steve knew he was probably going to hell for keeping the truth from Bucky for so long, for lying to Peggy about the other reasons he’d crashed the plane, and ogling his best friend in the hot spring despite not being able to help where his eyes were drawn when Bucky insisted they go in there together. He’d watched during the last few weeks as Bucky got thinner and thinner on their meagre stolen rations, but even so the life was slowly returning to his friend’s eyes.

Bucky had always been beautiful to look at, handsome with a dash of roguish charm that seemed to just draw women to him. Every dame in their neighborhood had wanted to be the one he took dancing most nights. Steve had always been a necessary tagalong, someone Bucky had felt obligated to bring when he took his latest gal out for a good time.

In reality Steve had only ever wanted the one person he couldn’t have. He had always been waiting for the right dance partner, the one he’d told Peggy about in vague detail.

“We’ll have you back to her in no time” Bucky said jostling Steve out of this thoughts.

“What?”

“Agent Carter. She’s your sweetheart, ain’t she?” Bucky clarified walking over to sit beside Steve at a bench near the window.

“Not really no. I haven’t even danced with her yet, Buck” Steve admitted, glancing sideways to see Bucky’s cerulean eyes flaring with an emotion he couldn’t name.

“Oh well you’ll get the chance now” he reminded Steve. “She’s a real special gal, Stevie. You can do all those things you used to tell me about with her once we get ourselves home from this.”

Steve closed his eyes and let out a deep easy breath.

“To be perfectly honest, I think she was humorin’ me. Just because we’re friends doesn’t mean she actually wants me stepping on her toes.”

Buck turned to stare at Steve with wide incredulous eyes that shone crystal blue, the way Steve had always remembered they had.

“Don’t think I believe that for a minute, punk. You don’t hafta water it down for my benefit, Stevie, I always knew I’d lose you someday” Bucky said slinging an arm over Steve’s shoulders, and leaning back against the wall. “It can’t always be just the two of us taking on the world.”

 _Can’t it?_ Steve wanted to say, but refrained because he knew he couldn’t manage to get up the courage to tell Bucky the truth.

He wanted to live with the illusion that it would always just be the two of them for a little while longer. So he leaned back and reveled in the momentary closeness as his thoughts drifted back to the early years they’d spent in Brooklyn before the war.

 

* * *

 

They spend the next three days after that crossing the alternatingly wooded terrain before they finally reach a military outpost at the border with a flag signaling that it’s controlled by the Swedish military.

They observe it for the next few hours from the shelter of the trees before deciding the sheer number of Swedish soldiers in attendance is safe enough to risk it and put their plan in motion.

Luck is with them and the Swedish military verifies their identities. It helps greatly that the lieutenant who searches their cargo bags finds Captain America’s shield and recognizes it immediately.

Bucky’s arm is examined by the medical team for safety reasons. They remove some of the metal shavings caught in between the finger junctions and dig a single dead tracking device out of his palm with care. Steve finds himself greatly impressed by the swift and efficient way the Swedish have of questioning them and ascertaining the situation.

He finds himself on the phone with Colonel Phillips within a matter of hours. The Swedish, he discovers, are neutral to their claim, they’ll return civilians and troops belonging to either side of the war without alerting the enemy. However, he gets the sense that they aren’t too fond of organizations like Hydra, the Nazis or Russian intelligence.

“Glad to hear you’re alive after that stunt you pulled over the radio, son. I’ll expect a full report when you get back here. Now tell me how in the hell you managed to get where you are?”

“Captured, sir. By the Russians.”

“Just you? There seems to be some conflicting reports about that on your end, Captain.”

“That’s because I’ve located Sergeant Barnes, sir, he’s here with me.”

“Do you mean to tell me that the Russians captured him after he fell hundreds of feet off a train?”

“Yes sir, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Can you positively identify him, Rogers? There are some people here at headquarters who want to know if your injuries have effected your situation, Captain. Seem to think time with the enemy changes a man. I’m inclined to ignore them so long as you can give me a full account when you report back.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Good. Now I want you to be honest with me, Rogers. You sure this man is Barnes?”

“Sir. I know my men. I can say without a doubt that this man is Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the Howling Commandos. He was the one to get me out.”

“So the Swedes would tell me” the Colonel agreed. “They’ve checked him over and outside of a missing limb, the man you claim to be your friend appears to be so.”

“Sir.”

“Agent Carter and her team will be there to extract you at 0800 two days from now. She’ll debrief you and give you your new orders. Welcome back, Captain, you’ve done good.”

“Thank you, sir. Good to be back. We’ll await further orders.” Steve answered

“Just make sure to stay alive this time, son” came Colonel’s reply and then the line went dead.

It bothered Steve that Bucky’s family probably wouldn’t be informed about his survival until after the SSR had them back in their custody and had run all procedural medical tests on them. He knew that Bucky had refused a position stateside to join him in the fight against Schmidt and Hydra. That it was because of him that Bucky’s parents had had to read a letter telling them of their son’s untimely death what was now six months ago. Beth, Ruth, and Rebecca had no doubt been torn apart by the news that the older brother they’d idolized wasn’t coming home.

Steve hadn’t told Bucky, though he'd sworn to eventually, that one of the reason he’d crashed the plane was because he couldn’t imagine going home without him. Any place he lived after that would have felt cold and empty without Bucky there, and Steve knew without any doubt that he couldn’t have looked the Barnes’s in the eye and explained to them it was his fault that Bucky had fallen to his death. Because he hadn’t been fast enough, hadn’t thought to make sure the Hydra agent with the missile launcher had been knocked fully unconscious before moving on to clear the rest of the cars. So that same agent couldn’t blow a hole in the side of the train and leave Bucky hanging off the edge.

Now at least Steve could return to Brooklyn, to the Barnes family, with the very person they’d all thought was lost forever.

Guilt over Bucky’s fall would never truly subside from Steve’s mind and while he knew his friend’s screams as he plunged into that ravine would forever be a part of his reoccurring nightmares, having Bucky back with him had lessened it some.

 

* * *

 

“Spending all those weeks out there in the wilderness reminded me of that saying Morita used to use when things got tough.”

“Out of the sticks in ’46” Steve recited from memory. “’cept it’s still 1945.”

Morita had said it over and over again like a mantra every time the nights got cold and rations went low. B units were barely edible as they were, but having not having enough was worse.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Can’t tell you how much I missed civilization while we were on the run” Bucky murmured as they ate the hot soup that had been brought up to their temporary quarters. The cook on base seemed determined to feed the two of them up after seeing how thin their trek across the wild lands of Russia had made them. “Nice to finally be back ‘n in good hands.”

“With real food” Steve agreed. “Not that I didn’t enjoy those rabbits you caught for us, but…there’s nothing like an oven cooked meal.”

“It’s alright I suppose” Bucky allowed. “Nothing like your mother’s cooking though or mine’s.”

Then his tone shifted.

“Do you think they’re okay, Steve?” Bucky asked anxiousness coating his tone, and Steve knew he was referring to his family.

Steve gulps and does his best to nod an affirmation. “They’re fine Bucky, they’ll be there when we get home” he says, fully aware that he hasn’t been in contact with Bucky’s family since he’d sent that heartrending letter just after Bucky fell, promising to make sure his sacrifice was honored.

 _And avenged_ , Steve thought, though he’d kept that part to himself. For him the days after his best friend’s presumed death had been the darkest Steve could remember outside of those directly following Sarah Roger’s funeral.

Steve had no idea what had happened back home during the time precluding the attack on the final Hydra base. He’d been so caught up in mourning Bucky and preparing for the mission that he hadn’t checked to see if there was any news from home. Though anything he could have received would have been weeks old and the writer blissfully unware of the impending tragedy that occurred just a few short days later.

“I’m going to believe that” Bucky stated resolutely. “I have to believe that they’ll be there waiting for us when we finally get discharged.”

“I’m looking forward to it too, Buck and seeing good old Brooklyn again” Steve added.

Bucky hummed approvingly as he took another sip of his soup.

“If it doesn’t work out, you know…you’re welcome to come back and we can find a place. Maybe get jobs and sort things out” he promised.

Steve felt what must have been hope flare up within his chest. He tried, but was hard pressed to clamp it down completely.

“I-I’d like that” Steve answered, barely keep the joy from being too evident in his voice. “I think after all of this is over, I just want to go home and say to hell with everything else for a while.”

“And here I thought you were going soft on me, Rogers” Bucky mused, his face spread in a teasing grin.

“Not on your life, Sergeant. I’ve done my fighting overseas, I’m ready to go back home and enjoy the peace.”

Bucky snorted.

“Yeah until some idiot insults an old lady in front of you, or, god forbid gets a little handsy with one of the gals from the next block. You’ll be there in a heartbeat insisting you’re gonna teach him a lesson.”

“Well someone has to” Steve states, still wholeheartedly believing that, if no one else, he has to be the one to do it.

“Same old Steve, never knows when to back down and keep it shut” Bucky muttered under his breath, though Steve caught it anyway with his enhanced hearing.

“You knew what you were getting into when you followed me, jerk” Steve retorted, spooning himself another mouthful of soup.

“Boy did I ever, remind me to bring something to tie you down with next time” Bucky joked, curling a hand around Steve’s neck, bringing the other one up to mess with his hair.

“Ugh, real mature, Buck. Real mature.”

“You know me, Stevie.”

“Yeah I know you” Steve replied muscling one of Bucky’s arms away so he could poke his ribs in just the right way. Bucky let out a noise in surprise, then started to laugh uncontrollably as Steve dug his hand in further and proceeded to tickle him. “Bet you’d never live it down if any of those pretty dames of yours saw you like this.”

“Steve...ugh…dammit Steve! Just remember…I…know…all of your…weak spots…pal” Bucky gasped in between breaths and bursts of near uncontainable fits laughter.

Later that night Steve found out that Bucky had in fact remembered all of _his_ weak spots when he took the opportunity, between medical check-ins and reports to the base CO, to tickle him senseless in retribution.

It felt so good to laugh, to feel nearly safe again.

 

* * *

 

It turned out that Peggy’s team included Dugan, Jim, and Gabe, along with about ten other SSR agents.

Steve smiled to see them again, he’d hoped all of the Commandos had survived the attack on Schmidt’s headquarters, but couldn’t be sure. It was good to have confirmation

Peggy looked torn between hugging Steve and wanting to shoot him again without the shield barring her way this time.

“You gave us quite a scare there, Cap” Morita said a relieved smile and coming up to put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Wouldn’t let myself believe you’d survived until I saw it with my own eyes. You too, Sarge.”

Bucky snorted.

“S’not that easy to kill me” he retorted.

“More like heaven don’t want ya and hell can’t stand having you” Dugan countered.

“Like they’d want you either, Dugan.”

“Do us a favor and stay away from anything that isn’t a car, tank, or boat for a while. Alright?” Morita said, but he was laughing as he said it.

“I’ll try” Steve replied, smiling sheepishly. He had crashed the plane on purpose after all with Morita on the line listening in.

“Good to have you back” Gabe said giving them both a reassuring smile and a salute.

Eventually Peggy managed to drag Steve away for a private conversation and, out of sight of the other men, a hug.

Bucky tried not to look let a flare of jealousy show as he watched them walk a few paces away from the rest of the group.

“Steve, I’m so glad you’re alive and James as well” she said. “Now Colonel Phillips wants the full report on this. He wants to keep you two as far away from the Russian lines as possible, so you’re being sent back to London for medical leave.”

“I’m real sorry Peggy, for leaving you like that…I can’t account for my actions-” Steve started to say.

Peggy shook her head.

“The important thing is that you brought him back” she said with a smile. “You were never the same after James fell.”

“No Ma’am” Steve admitted. “The world’s a different place for me without Bucky in it.”

“I know” Peggy replied with a knowing look. “The world tends to take things from us sometimes without giving much back. I’m glad you got yours back, Steve.”

“So am I. Peggy I…I’m going back to Brooklyn after the war.”

“I suspected as much. Even Howard knew what was really going on” she told him pointedly. “He won’t say anything either. Just make sure to write to us once in a while when you get back home and…I hope your happiness realizes exactly how you feel about him, I truly do.”

“Might not be what he’s looking for” Steve replied, doubtfully. “You should’ve seen him before the war with a dame on each arm every night. He doesn’t need me there to ruin that image.”

“But it may not be what he wants” Peggy argued. “The most difficult thing for a person at times is being honest with themselves.”

Steve sighed deeply.

“Personally I think dealing with what you find is the hard part.”

Peggy smiled reassuringly.

“Howard also wanted me to pass along a message to James that he wants to get a look at his arm while you’re in London, so he can make damn sure there aren’t any undesirables left in it” she informed him.

“It’ll certainly help Bucky sleep better at night” Steve answered. “We pulled a couple of trackers out of it after we escaped, but we couldn’t tell what else Russian intelligence may’ve left behind.”

“You’ll have time to sort it all out.”

“Are we being discharged?” Steve asked, concerned.

“No, but there are concerns about James’s heath after twice being held prisoner behind enemy lines” Peggy explained. “They want him to take time to properly recover from it. Headquarters also want to monitor you for any residual effects caused by the plane crash and what was done to you without your knowledge.”

“I understand” Steve intoned. “Guess I knew we’d have to face the music at some point.”

“You’ve done what you set out to do” Peggy reminded him. “Schmidt’s Hydra has been defeated and disassembled.”

“I can’t shake the feeling that missed something” Steve admitted. “Were there any other known bases listed in those files?”

“Yes and we’ve done a clean sweep of what’s left” Peggy revealed. “Dugan, Jones, and Morita were all present when we shut down the last of them.”

“So it is over then?”

“From what we’ve gathered” Peggy answered. “Now if only the rest of this bloody war would be over with it.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky very nearly punches Steve in the jaw for nearly killing himself by purposely crashing the Valkyrie.

“Stark could’ve helped you land the damn thing and you know it!”

Steve closes his eyes and tries to push down some of the guilt welling up inside him at those words, because he knows them to be true.

“It was-I-after you fell I couldn’t even think straight unless it involved putting an end to Hydra and the people who helped to kill you” he admitted, still not meeting Bucky’s eyes.

“You had everything to live for, punk.”

Steve shook his head.

“I kept thinking that whole week before the mission that I couldn’t go back and tell your family how I’d failed to bring you back and then…then I saw that Schmidt’s first target was New York. He-he was going to kill them, Buck! I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. I panicked because they were all I had left-Brooklyn was all I had left of who we were. Proof that our lives still meant something-”

Bucky had barely let out a sigh before he’d move across the room and enveloped Steve in a tight hug, while emotions welled up within him as he thought of his parents and sisters becoming part of the resulting body count in Hydra’s final contention for world domination.

“Can’t hold that one against you, punk, I’d’ve wanted to get that bird outta the sky as soon as I could” Bucky confessed, as his eyes flickered with emotion.

“There’s a chance Howard could have helped me land the plane...I just couldn’t bare what would happen it if I got it wrong” Steve said, determinedly not letting out a sniffle that’d welled up inside him.

 

* * *

 

They met up with Howard Stark in London and, after receiving a full medical work up including psychiatric evaluations from the military hospital’s team, were released into his hands. Howard was the only other scientist that had worked as closely with Dr. Erskine and was allowed to test Steve for any alterations that may have been made to the serum by Russian scientists. The end result was satisfactory, revealing that the super soldier serum had neither been tampered with nor altered.

Then Howard turned his attention to Bucky’s metal arm upon request from the United States military, because the technology itself was new and alien to them. Howard wisely kept some of his findings on Barnes’ physical state to himself and insisted that the arm itself was, while a definite scientific wonder, of a dangerous weight that could have severe effects on Bucky’s body, specifically his bone structure, if not corrected soon. This resulted in a month’s long process of first removing the arm, studying it while Bucky recovered from the inevitable damage caused by the forced removal (something that had worried Steve immeasurably despite his faith in Howard’s scientific abilities), and then fashioning a new prototype with a more feasible weight limit with only half of the same dexterity and joint flexibility to replace it.

It was all Howard could do to ensure that Bucky wouldn’t be left with a harness to keep his arm suspended against his shoulder. Fortunately Stark had managed to derive a method of attaching a false bone made of metal to what was left of the humerus bone in Bucky’s upper arm, which was purposefully hollowed and light enough so that it didn’t strain his triceps and biceps overly much.

Howard also confirmed that Bucky’s initial prosthetic was starting to degrade, causing a considerable strain on his nerves, which was why he’d started to feel pain in his joints.

Once they were cleared medically, the military released the news of the rescue of Captain America and Bucky Barnes from “behind enemy lines”. Newspapers and radio broadcasters ran circles around the carefully doctored story about Steve and Bucky having found each other after being captured separately by “remnants of Hydra”, planning an escape, and managing to contact the Allied forces to send in a rescue team. Steve didn’t like that they’d omitted mentioning that it was the Russians who’d captured them and experimented on Bucky, but Peggy’d already warned him to keep quiet about it during the debriefing. She’d told him that orders had come down from the higher ups to change the story, because they couldn’t afford to start another war when so much was still being done to clean up after this one.

So Steve had gritted his teeth and kept quiet on the subject, for her sake and for Bucky’s.

On the positive end of things, both Steve and Bucky were well enough to attend Victory Day celebrations at one of the local pubs with the other Commandos minus Howard Stark, when news spread that Nazi forces had finally surrendered. Howard for his part had taken a swim in the Thames after he’d tried to land one on Peggy Carter the moment the news broke, and was now suffering from severe chill. Steve didn’t even have the heart to tell him off after Stark had floundered in the river, apparently he was unable to swim, so Steve and Dugan had had to jump in to pull him out.

“Nice servin’ with you fellas and all, but I’m sure as hell glad I finally get to go home” Dugan yells over the noise of the crowd. He lifted his glass and shouted “To getting the hell out of here and going home!”

“I’ll drink to that” Morita yelled back.

“Your ugly mug hasn’t changed a bit, careful now that they don’t send you straight back” Falsworth quipped before taking a sip of his brandy.

“Aw shucks Monty, didn’t know you’d flipped the ol’ tea kettle and started caring ‘bout me now” Morita chimed back.

“To Dernier’s cooking, may it still keep many a man’s uneatable rations from killing him!”

“Tell me about it, man.”

“Je fais ce que je peux!”

“To Agent Carter! The only gal Barnes ever struck out with!”

“Yeah, yeah, yuk it up you guys.”

“To the Captain and the Sergeant for making it back in one piece after all!” Gabe added.

“Here! Here!”

“Knew you could do it, Barnes! Coming back from the grave just to drag Cap out of trouble!”

“They know you so well, Stevie” Bucky replied with a smirk.

“Jerk.”

Steve punched him in the shoulder, before getting up to go buy the next round.

 

* * *

 

“So let me get this straight, Zola shot me up with some second-rate version of Steve’s serum and it made me heal fast enough so the fall didn’t kill me?”

“That’s what my equipment tells me” Stark informed him. “The SSR had a theory that the packed snow was high enough that the drop wasn’t as steep as predicted and managed to cushion your fall.”

“You don’t believe that” Bucky confronted him, blue eyes reflecting the steel determination in his tone.

“No” Howard admitted with a small smirk, “but in the spirit of you not being locked up in a lab somewhere to be retested on the military’s orders, I’m going to leave that out of my report. No sense in letting military and ol’ Colonel Phillips know something that won’t hurt them. Whereas being on Captain America’s shit list most certainly would, if they ever elected to take you somewhere and study you.”

“Thanks, Stark.”

“Don’t mention it and _don’t_ let anyone other than Steve know about this. Not even your own family.”

Bucky nods and feels a strange weight on his shoulders. He knew coming back wouldn’t be easy, but lying to the U.S. government was taking that to extremes.

He regretted not being able to tell the Commandos, but he understood Stark’s fear all too well and wasn’t about to gamble his freedom if one of the guys happened to reveal something while being just a little bit tipsy.

 

* * *

 

Bucky goes to Stark at the Strategic Scientific Reserve’s London Headquarters, is a few minutes early, and catches sight of Arnim Zola being escorted from his holding cell with a group of other men in white coats. Several agents lead the men into military transports and out of Bucky’s sight line. Zola doesn’t see him, doesn’t stop and look back, but Bucky can see that same eerie sheen of light tracing along the lenses of the man’s glasses.

That night Bucky has a nightmare in which Zola gives him the metal arm that he’d been left with in Russia. Doesn’t know how it’s possible, but that doesn’t stop him from waking up screaming.

When Steve wakes him, talking comfortingly in hushed tones, Bucky manages to calm his breathing and turns to him with wary expression of realization on his face.

“Zola got to me again” he explained, feeling shivers travel all the way down his spine. “Gave me the arm, wanted me to become his new Hydra weapon. The reason they had me drugged outta my mind up there, is he wanted me on ice until he could give instructions on what to do with me.”

“Bucky he’s been in custody since Gabe brought him in during that mission in the Alps” Steve replied, taking a deep breath. “If he goes anywhere, it’s under guard. It couldn’t-”

“There are things I forgot, _Steve_ , bits and pieces that they shocked out of me when they put me under and started whatever they were gonna do to me” Bucky said almost pleadingly. “Seeing that bastard today reminded me that I’d seen ‘im, wherever the fuck I was when they pulled me out at the bottom of that cliff. You’ve gotta believe me.”

Steve stares at him for a moment, studying his friend’s expression, going over everything he knows about Bucky in his head. He hasn’t always known when Bucky was lying, he didn’t have the same tell-tales that Steve did, but right now the seriousness in his friend’s gaze was hitting home Bucky’s utter certainty about this particular memory. It was a sure bet that he would never lie about something like this, and while the two of them had had their fair share of drug induced hallucinations while in captivity, something about the circumstances behind Bucky’s discovery and retrieval still didn’t sit right with Steve.

He knew that he couldn’t account for Zola’s whereabouts during the months that they’d been locked up in Russia, and couldn’t definitively say that Zola hadn’t been traded back and forth in a prisoner exchange before the war was officially over. This, when coupled with Bucky’s claim that Zola had been the one to surgically attach his prosthetic arm, was extraordinarily disconcerting.

“If what you say is true, Buck, then it means we can’t trust some of the people working for the SSR” Steve replied, trying to hide the sharpness his own spiking nerves. “We’re gonna have to watch our backs even more now.”

Bucky nods and exhales harshly.

“Besides the Commandos, I think we can trust Peggy and Howard.”

“After all they did for us, I’d say you’re right, punk” Bucky agreed. “Though I don’t know how they’d take to me rememberin’ something like this after the fact.”

Steve shook his head “no”.

“I don’t know if they’d believe us right now. We can’t have Peggy worrying and putting you back in with those doctors, Bucky. Not now that we don’t know if they’re in Zola’s pocket” Steve said, staring back at Bucky with worry in those bright blue eyes. He put a hand up to move his bangs out of his eyes, fidgeting a little with his hair. Something Bucky recognized as a nervous tick. “After crashing the plane and getting captured I don’t-I’m not the same anymore. I’ll probably always be lookin’ over my shoulder for the next attack when we get back home, but what you remembered has got me thinkin’ that we might not be out of this even then.”

“I don’t doubt it. Zola didn’t stop until he got me back” Bucky asked, looking back at him, sweat already dampening his neck. “Wouldn’t put it past the bastards that had us to be the same way.”

“We can go back to Brooklyn” Steve proposed after some thought. “Your families’ there, and it’ll be easier to clear our heads and decide what we wanna do once we’re finally home.”

“You’d really come back to live with me, Stevie?” Bucky asked, his expression showing his complete surprise.

“Yeah I am” Steve said with a grin. “Can’t let you go getting into trouble without me, now can I?”

Bucky snorted.

“You’re the stubborn idiot that kept getting into fights you couldn’t win” he murmured, looking a bit wistful. “I can’t wait to finally get back to Old Brooklyn ‘n see that smile on Becca’s face when I pick her up and twirl her around again.”

“She might be too big for you to do that now, Buck” Steve chided teasingly. “Bet she’s grown up and started walking out with some of the boys at her school.”

“Not likely when I get there to give them a talking to” Bucky retorted. Then his expression became somber. “You sure about all of this, Steve? What about Agent Carter?”

“I told you, it isn’t like that with me and her. She’s a good friend, but neither of us are what the other is looking for” Steve answered.

“If you say so.”

They let the matter drop, roll over and go back to sleep. Bucky curls a bit more into Steve, tries to convince himself that it’s only for warmth and not because he’s afraid he’ll wake up for real and Steve won’t be there.

Bucky has reoccurring nightmares about Zola’s treatments right up until the surgery where Howard fits him with a new, though slightly less dexterous arm. He nearly hugs Howard when he wakes up from the operation in intense pain and realizes that he’s finally managed to shake off the last remnants of Zola and Hydra from his body.

Steve doesn’t relay what Bucky revealed about Zola to Peggy Carter or Howard, because he has nothing to prove Bucky’s claims even if he himself believes the truth of it. He fears that even if they don’t believe Bucky, then Allied intelligence might get it in their heads that Bucky has more useful information locked away in his head, and do their best to pry it out of him psychological state be damned.

 

* * *

 

Howard Stark tested the prosthetic that Barnes had been originally equipped with and noted further degradation in each of the joints. He recorded five more structural flaws and set about altering his own blueprints making allowances for bone density and possible corrosion from prolonged use.

 

* * *

 

“I promised to teach you how to dance, Steve and now that you’re back I’m going to keep my word” Peggy rounded on Steve a few days after he’s been officially cleared by Stark.

“You sure you want me stepping on your toes, Peggy? With how big they are now I’m liable to accidentally break something” Steve warned, despite what the serum had done for his overall health he still felt like he had two left feet when it came to finer things like dancing.

“My dancing shoes have reinforced steel in them” she assured him. Then seeing his surprised look she clarified a bit more. “For missions that require a bit of infiltration.”

Steve nods and doesn’t ask for details, though he suspects there are enemy agents somewhere still limping heavily.

Peggy did manage to turn Steve into a passable dancer, but was couldn’t seem to get him to stop watching his feet and face his partner for more than two seconds at a time.

“It’ll come Steve, you’ll get the hang of it after some more practice.”

 

* * *

 

In 1946 Captain Steve Rogers and his Howling Commandos are officially discharged and disbanded. They all trade information, intending to write letters and keep in touch. When they arrive home it’s to some local fanfare, though for Gabe Jones and Jim Morita it’s stilted at best and only among their own ethnic communities. At least until some of the newly discharged men coming home recognized them as part of Captain America’s team and the ones who saved their asses from Hydra more than once. After that Gabe and Jim are tolerated as local celebrities in their hometowns and shown a grudging respect that sees them and their families through several future periods of unrest.

This remains a sore spot with Steve for years to come, because he can’t stand the idea that his men gave their all for their comrades and their country only to come home and receive tolerance in place of the respect they deserved.

“Just you wait, punk, you’ll get your chance. Not everyone’s as easy to convince as Colonel Phillips” Bucky tells him as they sit in their old apartment on a calm Sunday afternoon. The landlord had saved their belongings and offered them the use of their old apartment, which had tenanted on and off during the war, but was currently vacant.

Steve eyed him sardonically.

“I had to personally stand over the doctors who cleared Morita and Jones to make sure they didn’t fudge the results just to keep them off my team” he said dryly. “Before nearly having to fight half the division over it.”

“Nearly was it?” Bucky idly took a sip of his drink. “I seem to remember most of them giving up pretty quickly after you decked Hodge straight in the kisser for calling Morita a Jap spy.”

“Served him right” Steve muttered. “He had no right sayin’ that when everyone knew Hydra hadn’t treated Jim any differently than anyone else when they captured him.”

“Not arguing that, Rogers. Personally I think Phillips wanted to see just how far you’d go to have them on your team.”

Steve can’t help but agree after remembering the time the Colonel had thrown a dummy grenade onto the parade ground at Camp Lehigh.

“They’re good men. I’d’ve fought a lot harder than that to make sure I got them _all_ of them on my team.”

“Think he figured that one out, punk, after you broke through an entire line just to give Gabe and Dum Dum some backup.”

“Couldn’t just leave ‘em.”

“I know. M’just sayin’ I think he got the message after the first several missions. Carter looked pretty impressed too” Bucky continued, “but none of ‘em knew how dangerously self-sacrificing you were back then.”

“That’s not how it is Buck and you know it” Steve objected.

Bucky waved a hand to let Steve know he was overruled.

“I think everyone except Agent Carter thought you were putting on a show for the war effort up until that mission in Seine where you almost got your pretty blonde head blown off to save those injured GI’s” Bucky snorted.

“You tellin’ me I’m pretty?” Steve joked.

“Pretty troublesome, punk.”

“Can it Sarge, or I’ll have you flacked for insubordination” Steve shot back, taking a sip of his drink.

“Only if you lock me up with a few of them USO gals you like to write to” Bucky countered with a flirtatious wink.

Steve shook his head.

“Not sure tall, snark, and jerkish is their type, Buck” he replied, resulting in Bucky chucking a balled up napkin at him.

Steve and Bucky had returned to a Brooklyn, to a neighborhood that was still trying to reconcile both images of them before and after the war. Bucky’s parents are, despite seeing the war films, surprised at the stark change in Steve’s physical appearance. Though Bucky’s mother confides that she’s glad to see he’s still the same good person he was before they gave him the serum.

“It’s just easier for him to get into trouble now, Ma” Bucky tells her. “They didn’t know what they were doing by giving it to him. All it did was make it harder to drag him away from the fights he picks.”

Though he was as happy as the rest of them to finally be home and be able to hug his parents and sisters again.

Bucky’s mother pulled them both into fiercely tight hugs, glad to have her boys home and within arm’s reach at last. George Barnes clapped Steve and Bucky on the shoulder, offering them a stiff drink and a proper salute.

Rebecca, Beth, and Ruth showered Steve with flowers and drawings that they’d collected to give him as welcome home gifts, as well as their first attempts at knitting scarves, hats, and socks so he wouldn’t catch cold in the winter. Bucky seemed to find this incredibly amusing since it was nearly impossible for Steve to catch anything now because of the serum.

Overall the Barnes family and the neighborhood in general hadn’t seen Steve since before he’d shipped out to Camp Leigh in New Jersey, and finally seeing the stark physical changes in him in person instead of through flickering newsreels, had taken some getting used to. Steve had been several inches shorter than Bucky’s parents pre-serum whereas now they were dwarfed by him.

 

* * *

 

Steve keeps the shield, which Howard had smuggled out for him, telling him to keep it on hand, and puts it by his bedside with his service weapon. He can’t shake the feeling that it isn’t all over yet.

One night when he’s lost in his own thoughts after being shaken awake by another dream of Bucky falling from a snowy cliff, he hears the movement of feet and realizes that he isn’t the only one left awake.

“Can I sleep with you?” Bucky’s voice rings out in the quiet of the quiet of Steve’s bedroom.

Steve squints through the darkness to look at him. Bucky is shivering and looking as unnerved as Steve feels most nights now that they’re home. They’ve both had to wake each other up from scream inducing nightmares on more than one occasion, and Steve knows that this time Bucky’s had another disorienting flashback of his own.

“’Course you can. C’mon” Steve answers, moving the covers back so Bucky can slip under them.

He moves himself into a comfortable position and puts a hand on Steve’s arm.

“Need to remind myself that you’re here” Bucky murmurs sleepily as he lays his head on Steve’s extra pillow. “That you aren’t dead like they told me y’were.”

Steve’s eyes grow wide.

“Who told you?” he presses.

“Soldiers, doctors…Zola…” And there it was, Steve’s reminder that remnants of Hydra still existed despite the organization’s demise after the SSR’s final assault and the death of Schmidt.

_Cut off one head…two more shall take its place._

No Steve couldn’t shake the indescribable feeling that none of it was completely over.

 

* * *

 

Bucky joins him in bed most nights after that and takes to keeping his own service rifle on the near the opposite side of the bed within arm’s reach. Both of them sleep better for it and some nights the darker dreams are lessened to a dull roar, and they get a few more hours rest at a time.

The flashback dreams subside only slightly to evolve into panic attacks.

Both of them start getting them at times even when they’re awake. Bucky’s father seems to get it and his mother warns the girls to talk softly and not to go near either Bucky or Steve when they’re like that.

Steve is grateful when he realizes it once after coming back to himself. He doesn’t want to hurt one of them by accidentally striking out on reflex.

Bucky finds he doesn’t feel right without doing perimeter checks of the apartment at least four times a day. Something Steve finds himself in agreement with after being on the run from Russian intelligence for months on end. The two of them know where the tide is turning overseas and that it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to retrieve one or both of them to finish the unfinished science experiment.

Bucky goes out on a few dates, while Steve has a casual coffee with a few girls from neighborhood. Neither ever commits to any long term relationships and, after a while, manage to find some peace in their quiet routine of living together and sleeping in close quarters when the clouds of darker memories become too thick in their minds.

 

* * *

 

Their military back-pay holds out long enough for both of them to recovery some sense of stability and Steve gets a job drawing caricatures and comics for two of the local newspapers.

Bucky bartends and does odd jobs, mentally shaking his head when people suddenly take notice of it and praise him ridiculously for doing something as simple as helping Mrs. Kochanski with her groceries or delivering old Mr. Fitzpatrick’s cooking gin to him on colder days.

It’s Brooklyn and people welcome them back as war heroes and things of legend, but here, here people still remember them _before_ they became part of that glittering image of victory and endurance. Here they feel safe enough to still walk the streets and pretend that life is normal.

Even though their morning routine involves heavy exercise and there are nights when Bucky spends hours at the shooting range teaching Steve how to improve his aim and refine his control.

On nights when they have the range to themselves, because most people are busy inhabiting the bar late, late at night, Bucky will move a step closer, put an arm across Steve’s shoulder to level the barrel of the gun and whisper instructions in his ear. Steve has to work to keep his focus on the target rather than on the smooth, husky, sometimes teasing, sound of Bucky’s voice as it murmurs to him, warm breath tickling the loose strands on Steve’s neck.

The feeling only intensifies when he watches Bucky shoot a few rounds into a target, when he’s deeply attentively focused on the mark in front of him, and fires the rifle between carefully conscious breaths. Every one of the target’s weak points saw a clean hit, made with an instinctive accuracy that Bucky just seemed to possess and an exceptional competence that made the warm feeling in Steve’s chest grow and spread to the tips of his ears. He really really hoped Bucky hadn’t noticed that bit when he gave a passing glance before reloading.

Bucky, not realizing his friend’s personal dilemma, has to resist the urge to press a kiss to Steve’s earlobe and wraps both arms around him more securely, brushing the back of Steve’s legs with the front of his, while putting the blonde through his paces.

 

* * *

 

When they go to the movies occasionally they try to see the films they missed during the war, even some of Steve’s old ones at Bucky’s insistence, so he can tease him mercilessly about “winning the war all by himself” and “preserving the American way for guys and gals like you and me”.

There’s one film though that they see several times within one year alone, the acclaimed “The Hunt for Captain America”, which came out in 1946 nearly a year after they were rescued in Sweden. It details their fictitious imprisonment by remnants of Hydra, which as Steve points out isn’t all that far-fetched a concept, and their bid for freedom with the help of a young Jewish girl and her beautiful blonde ridiculously attractive older sisters, who seemed surprisingly well preserved despite being held prisoner by Hydra for most of the war and undergoing heinous experiments.

Steve came out of seeing it not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Bucky feels that while parts of it are completely sacrilegious, he enjoys watching them run circles around Hydra, including the “ghost of Johann Schmidt”, with two dames and a twelve-year-old in toe so much that it’s worth seeing just to laugh over it despite all the incredibly horrendous factual errors.

 

* * *

 

“Hello, Steve?”

“Peggy, it’s great to hear from you.”

“Likewise, listen I’ve got a favor to ask of you. I wouldn’t normally do this, but I’m in a bit of a tight spot with a request from Howard. Would you and James be willing to help me with a bit of shopping?”

Steve blinked. He certainly hadn’t been expecting that when he’d gotten up to heat his morning coffee.

“I’m have to run it by Bucky, but I doubt he’d have a problem with helping you out. Where are you?”

“I’m back in Brooklyn actually at one of the rooming houses. I’ll give you the address and the extension, so you can let me know if you’ll both agree to it.”

“Are you in any trouble, Peggy, because I can-”

“No it’s just something for work. The setting may have changed, but the job has unquestionably remained the same.”

 _She’s means she’s still with the SSR and so’s Stark_ , Steve thought, but didn’t say it aloud. He knew someone as cautious and professional as Peggy would be wary of passing un-coded information over the phone lines.

“I’ll let you know as soon as I can” Steve agrees.

“Thank you Steve, I truly appreciate it. Give James my best as well” Peggy replied. “I need to go, I’ve got some business to handle for work. I hope I’ll be seeing you seen, at one of Howard’s little get-together’s at the very least.”

“Take care of yourself, Peggy” Steve tells her before they hang up.

“I’ll be sure to,” she replied, and he could hear the amused smile in her tone, “and please be sure to do the same, Steve.”

Bucky shrugs and says he’s game if Steve is. They both know that Peggy has something in mind for other than carrying a few paper bags around for her.

As it turns out Peggy’s “shopping” list entails several sets of schematics and miniature prototypes that’d been purloined from Howard Stark’s safe, while said inventor was on the run from Congress and the SSR. They’re accompanied by Stark’s butler Edwin Jarvis, their get-away driver, on a mission to clear Stark’s name when the headlines name him a traitor after several of the stolen inventions show up on the black market watch list.  

_“Stark’s waiting it out in Shangre-La. M’not surprised, seeing as how the entire government’s hot for him right now” Bucky remarked._

_“Exactly, which is why he’s asked me to do it for him” Peggy returned lightly, “without the SSR’s knowledge.”_

_“We owe him one” Steve said, trading a knowing glance with Bucky, “so we’d like to help out in any way we can.”_

_“Good, well we can start by changing your wardrobe” she insisted, “because where we’re going, we can’t afford to be recognized.”_

Countless days are spent finding, containing, and de-weaponizing several of Howard’s more dangerous inventions, which Bucky grumbled should never even have seen the light of day, never mind the inside of a regrettably crackable safe.

Peggy’s roommate Colleen barely survives an encounter with a member of a secret organization called Leviathan, thanks to some quick thinking on Steve’s part, but her condition remains critical and she’s eventually shipped home for her recovery. Something that prompts Peggy to move into one of the local ladies boarding complexes, The Griffith, with the help of an acquaintance, a waitress who worked at the L&D Automat, which Bucky sometimes frequented for lunch. Peggy warns them that won’t allow her any male visitors through the main lobby, so any meetings excepting the most dire will be strictly away from her new residence.

Not that Bucky or Steve would have a problem finding a way up if she were caught in a similar jam, with the Leviathan agent still out there. Although they’re both incredibly sure such an event will never come to pass, considering the fact that they’ve seen Peggy take out grown men two heads taller with a few very precisely places hits. Whatever objects came to hand seemed to become lethal the moment she held them between her fingers.

 

* * *

 

“Jarvis is right, Peggy, you can’t take the bum rap for Stark” Steve persisted. “Let him call in the tip to the SSR.”

“Those blighters won’t have an ounce of respect for what that symbol could mean, Steve” she insisted, before narrowing her eyes at the unconscious man lying on the floor with hands tied behind his back, “and we can’t very well leave this man behind, he’s a witness.”

Peggy had gone back and researched the symbol left behind by one of the men who’d gotten ahold of Howard’s inventions, a heart-shaped symbol with a line jutting out of the bottom and another line with a snake like curve that arced across the middle.

“SSR could have a warrant to search Stark’s premises by morning” Bucky called out from behind the boxes. “This guy being found in it wouldn’t help our case any.”

“I agree with Sergeant Barnes” Jarvis piped up calmly. “We need to cover all of our bases, otherwise a court martial will be the least of our troubles.”

“You damn well better know what you’re doing” Peggy answered, favoring Jarvis with a very specific look that promised a chat later if suggestion caused them to cut it too close.

“I assure you, Ms. Carter, I’ve seen Mr. Stark out of worst spats than this” Jarvis responded before turning heal and making for the nearest payphone.

“And Mr. Jarvis?”

He turned back.

“They’ll know your voice now, so please be sure to disguise it.”

“Of course, Ms. Carter.”

Steve blinked, he’d nearly forgotten Jarvis had agreed to accompany several Agents Thompson and Sousa down to the station in order to keep them from checking the house and discovering the three of them there. They’d questioned him extensively about a license plate found at the scene of crime scene, where Steve, Peggy, and Bucky had tried to keep a handle on the thief they presumed had scoured Howard’s vault, and keep the fully weaponized duplicates of one of those inventions from imploding and instantly killing them. Jarvis had eventually been let go, but it stood to reason that the agents now knew his voice patterns.

Eventually it was decided that they would leave their prisoner behind for the SSR to find, even though it meant running the risk of him identifying Peggy’s voice and nationality, because he hadn’t gotten a good look at her face in the dim light before Jarvis and Bucky had taken him down.

Steve spent the ride home trading knowing glances with Bucky as Peggy interrogated Jarvis about his war record and past involvement with Howard Stark, which apparently involved Stark getting Jarvis out of tough situation with the British armed forces. He’d disobeyed orders and forged a General’s signature on a letter of transit in order to save the love of his life, a young Jewish woman named Anna he’d met in Budapest, from persecution and eventual detainment by the Nazis.

“I understand why he did it” Steve said later that night. “That General had no right to refuse a request to save a person’s life like that. It had to’ve been about the money, Buck.”

Bucky hummed in agreement.

“Probably wanted to use those letters to get his mistress and her family out” he considered. “Most of them were like that during the war. I’m starting to think Phillips was the exception.”

“Still Mr. Jarvis was brave to do what he did.”

“S’not taking the heat so much as living with it afterward, Steve” Bucky reminded him. “I know what you mean and I’d probably do the same thing he did, if push came to shove, for you or my family, but god, if Stark hadn’t stuck his neck out for him, we wouldn’t even know the guy because he’d be lying at the bottom of a cell with a twenty year sentence.”

He turned to look at Steve.

“That said, I think you already did that, punk. I seem to remember a certain showgirl that came to my rescue when Hydra was using me as a lab rat.”

“You would’ve done the same for me, Bucky.”

“I told you ‘til the end of the line, pal, and I meant it. Especially if this business with Stark gets any shadier.”

“We’ll get ‘em on the ropes” Steve insisted with a hope that Bucky wanted so badly to share.

It was all over a few months later, including an incident where Howard had paid them a surprise visit and informed them of another necessary interaction with a highly dangerous explosive…that had turned out to be a vial of Steve’s blood.

“What’s in the vial Howard?” Peggy confronted him as she, Steve, and Bucky stood inside her tiny apartment.

“How’d you get them past the Crucible downstairs?”

“We evaded Russian intelligence for weeks, I think we can manage breaking into a hen house” Bucky retorted.

“Don’t call it that, Buck, it’s rude” Steve scolded him.

“Keep your voice down, _Steve_. Wouldn’t want the Mother Superior downstairs to sense the presence of ‘men-folk’ now would we?” Bucky teased.

“Can we please stay on topic? Now, what is in that vial, _Howard?_ ” Peggy persisted.

“I think we all know what it is” Howard replied frankly, as if he were trying to hold on to some semblance of composure.

Steve’s eyes narrowed.

“Isn’t that the Army’s property now?” he asked, a severe line forming in his jaw as it tightened.

“I worked on Project Rebirth, so they got half and I got half” Howard explained. “And you wouldn’t want to know what they’ve done with theirs, trust me.”

“So you’re telling me that thing has some of Steve’s blood in it?” Bucky asked curiously raising an eyebrow.

“They wanted samples after Dr. Erskine was murdered” Steve explained, “so I gave it to them.”

“That was an idiot thing to do. You kept all the stupid here with you instead, didn’t you, punk?”

“Not likely, when you’re still hogging most of it all to yourself” Steve smiled. “Didn’t really have a choice about giving the blood at the time. I was under orders and under the impression they were going to try and restart the program after they figured out how to remake the serum.”

Howard snorted.

“We still haven’t managed that and the war’s been over quite a while, pal. No, I’ve got news for you, the Army’s decided that your blood’s a weapon the same as any other. The only reason they haven’t called you in is they already think they’ve got you right where they want you.”

Steve’s expression was speculative and worrisome.

“Relax, you’re an American Hero and so far in the spotlight it’d be nearly impossible to make you disappear without raising questions on Capitol Hill” Howard responded.

“What were you going to do with it?” Steve asked firmly.

“I wanted to study it for medical purposes” Stark admitted, somewhat guiltily.

Bucky folded his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow.

“When were you planning on telling Steve about that?”

“I wasn’t. I came up with that plan when I thought the two of you were knee deep in the grave” Howard explained. “I put it away once I found out you weren’t and cut my expedition short to catch a flight to London.”

“I want Peggy to have it” Steve said finally. “She’s the one person, excluding Bucky, that I’d trust not to use it unless it was necessary.”

“Your definition of necessary-”

Peggy blinked in surprise.

“Are you certain?” she pressed, cutting Howard off.

Steve nodded.

“I’d want you to have it in case something did happen to me and the world ever needed the serum or someone with it to help them.”

The look Peggy gave him in return displayed the gravity of the emotion she felt after finding he trusted her to guard a part of himself.

“Then we need to do this right. Howard is this the only sample of Steve’s blood in your possession?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

”If it’s all the same I’d just rather the military didn’t get their hands on it” Howard remarked holding up his hands in surrender.

Bucky rolled his eyes.

“That is going to be the very least of our worries, Mr. Stark” Peggy quipped as she shifted re-secured the vial into its sphere-shaped casing. “But yes, I will make sure to keep it secure so that our friends in military intelligence don’t become aware of it.”

Eventually after Howard is give a very pointed lecture about withholding information shared by both Peggy and Bucky, Steve and Bucky slip out through the dumbwaiter during the building’s communal dinner hour.

The two of them nearly take a trip upstate to visit Dugan for a much needed vacation, only to find out that he’s been called in by the SSR to act as ground support for a mission to Russia with the other Commandos, headed by none other than Peggy herself.

“We all know that neither of you could ever go back there” she explained.

“It wouldn’t be safe for us or for you” Bucky admitted and for once Steve didn’t disagree. The chance that their unknown enemies within the Soviet Union would try to recollect them was too great and the possibility of Bucky’s capture weighed heavily on Steve’s mind, because he knew Bucky wouldn’t sit out any mission that he took part in.

“Just come back alive” Steve told Peggy and the Commandos two days before they were set to leave.

“Aye Aye, Cap. Just have the drinks ready when we get back” Dugan replied with a grin, causing the others to laugh. “And make mine a double.”

 

* * *

 

Neither of them slept well during the nights leading up to Peggy and the Commandos' return. When it was finally over and the mission revealed to be successful, both Steve and Bucky joined them at small pub in Brooklyn for a drink just as they’d promised.

Clearing Howard Stark’s name wasn’t as clear cut as it should have been and upon Peggy’s return from Russia, she, Steve, and Bucky continued their nightly escapades to obtain and return Howard’s purloined inventions. Eventually they reached the end of the line and when the dust cleared Howard managed to finagle his way back into the Washington’s good graces, causing Peggy to slide back into her normal mundane routine at the SSR’s headquarters and Steve and Bucky to once again return to civilian life.

After that Captain America makes a few public appearances, but only at charities and local hospitals, because he refuses to be anyone’s show pony ever again. Howard’s parties become the one noted exception, because he’s a personal friend and one of the few that Steve trusts completely. Bucky trusts Stark, but maintains that he just as reckless as Steve is, and that they’re both good at getting themselves into a stupid amount of trouble.

 

* * *

 

Bucky continues to quote the ridiculously built up _Adventures of Captain America_ radio show that airs every afternoon, except Sundays, and chuckles at the overdone German accents and dumbed down dialogue of the evil Hydra agents that insist on holding Captain America’s latest girl hostage.

Dugan sends them a record that plays _Star Spangled Man With A Plan_ for Christmas that year and Bucky makes Steve get up and dance to it, despite his fervent insistence that he would never do so again.

They also get a letter via Peggy from her former roommate Colleen O’Brien, thanking them for jumping in to help her and Peggy during the “break-in”. Colleen had been given a heavily edited version of what’d happened in their apartment that night by Peggy and only knew the two young men who’d helped them as Peggy’s friends Steve and James, having blacked out from the pain of her injury before Steve’s shield was brought into play.

 

* * *

 

One morning in 1947 Steve steps out to get the paper and ends up walking back with a numb feeling ghosting in the back of his throat. The headline is a continuation of another story, it says, that printed back in 1945 while they were still in Europe getting Bucky’s arm replaced. A newly formed organization called the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, patronized by Howard Stark and the higher ups in the SSR, had recruited and repurposed the talents of former Nazi allied German scientists, more specifically Hydra, because Zola’s standing there in the background nearly overshadowed by his compatriots comparative height.

Steve walks into the apartment and silently hands Bucky the paper. He watches as his best friend’s face becomes a stone cold mask, while his eyes shine with mixture of blood and fear.

They turn to stare at each other, knowing _knowing_ that Hydra still lives even if in the barest of ways. Zola was a head of Hydra working right beside Schmidt. There are possibilities for what this could become, this agency that has someone like Zola laying down the first patent for its scientific research, and it chafes at the small level of contentedness they’d managed to build up over the last several months.

 

* * *

 

“Listen to me Stark. You need to put a watch on Zola. He was Schmidt’s top scientist and your recruiting him has only given him a long list of opportunities to continue everything he started back with Hydra.”

“You’re giving him too much credit, Rogers. We’ve got him boxed in here, the war’s over and he’s got nowhere to run without ending up stuck in the crosshairs of SSR’s best and brightest” Stark contended. “We’re going to send men to the moon, Cap, but in the meantime we need men like him to sift through the equations and get us there.”

“Hydra grew up right under Hitler’s nose and almost overtook him. What makes you think these people don’t still have the capability to choke the life out of whatever agency takes them in and build something else in its place” Steve countered.

“Fine he’s a smart cookie, but I’m better. If it helps you sleep at night, you’ll be happy to know that I haven’t let any of my scientists near the new prototype for Barnes’ arm that I’ve been working on.”

Steve grumbled internally at the unsubtle subject change, but let the matter drop after realizing that he wasn’t getting further with convincing Howard to limit Zola’s participation in Shield’s scientific division.

“Bucky’ll be happy to hear that. He’s grateful for all that you’ve done, and so am I.”

“Whatever ya say, pal” Stark replied with one of his charming devil-may-care grins. “Just make sure he takes full advantage of the improved dexterity, will you?”

Steve blinks and decides the suggestive curve to Howard’s smile is just his attempt at humor. He couldn’t possibly know about Steve’s _minor_ crush on his best friend.

“Don’t think I’ll have to” Steve answers, waving off whatever punchline Stark seems to be expecting from him. “Bucky’s already got plans for it.”

“I’ll bet he does” Stark rejoinders. “Man after my own heart really. Tell him I still owe him a drink after that fiasco in D.C.”

“Was this the one with the redhead who turned out to be a male reporter?”

“The very same, my friend, the very same. Barnes got me out of trying to explain that one by telling them all I was too into my liquor to tell how ugly he was in that Chanel number.”

“You don’t strike me as a man who’d care too much about that, Stark” Steve retorted.

“Can’t say that I am” Howard admitted, “but I’ve got a few things I’d like to keep Congress and the press in the dark about. Bastards wouldn’t be above prosecuting me for it just to take me down. I was worth more to them during the war then I am now.”

“That’s not the way I hear it.”

“Shield’s yet to prove itself in their eyes” Howard reminded him. “Half of the things we saw during the war they couldn’t even begin to believe.”

Steve couldn’t deny that. Hydra had been good at finding ways to rearrange the laws of science to suit their purposes. Not unlike Howard, really, with his lethal formulas and nearly daily advances in biochemical engineering.

“I didn’t know a person could like both” Steve said quietly.

Howard turned from where he’d been peering into a scope to look Steve in the eye.

“We’re all wired differently” he replied matter-of-factly. “I’ve had fun with both, and let me tell you, pal, it can be a wild ride if you let it. The majority of people just haven’t accepted the possibility yet, because it doesn’t fit with what they know. Like everything we found Hydra was capable of could just be explained away in the Bible somehow.”

“Think they left that bit out” Steve chuckled lightly. “I don’t really see how caring about someone could be considered wrong, when one of its first messages talks about love and why we need it.”

“If that’s the way you see it, I’m not going to argue” Stark said turning back to his work. “Just make sure the press circuit doesn’t get wind of it or you and Barnes’ll find yourselves at the mercy of more than just the House committee.”

“Bucky…he doesn’t know.” Steve said, looking forlorn.

“You’ve been through hell’n back together, so something tells me he isn’t going to out you or just disappear.”

 _Bucky would never hurt me,_ Steve thought, _but there’s a damn good chance he’d run if he knew I felt that way about him._

“I s’ppose not” Steve said aloud. “Doesn’t mean he’d feel all that comfortable bein’ around that kinda thing.”

“I wager he’d try to protect you more than anything, Rogers” Stark insisted. “If he’s already got your six, you might as well give him a hand helping you hide why Captain America isn’t waltzing down the aisle or ready steady like every other GI that Uncle Sam’s shipped back.”

“They can’t’ve-”

“Oh they’ve noticed, believe me. Carter’s been putting them off for the last couple of years, but by now the story’s wearing thin. Either let Barnes in or find someone else who’ll cover for you. Say the word and I can have someone lined up that I can pay to keep her sweet little mouth shut, while you take her out and dance for the press.”

Steve sighed heavily, putting a hand to his head. He hadn’t realized just how much people were still paying attention to him, when he was still just a kid from Brooklyn with a uniform and a shield that hadn’t been used publicly since the war ended. He honestly hadn’t thought they’d had a reason to watch him now that he wasn’t fighting Hydra or posing for propaganda films.

“Fine, I’ll straighten things out with Bucky. Just don’t call any of your lady friends, Stark. I’m definitely not the one they want to keep company.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, pal. I hear Captain America’s quite a catch when he stops trying to hold himself back” Howard responded, moving to examine the tightness of a precariously placed bolt. “Find yourself the right gal and you might even get a little _fondue_ on the side there, Rogers.”

Steve’s reply was an indignant disapproving grumble and only made Stark laugh harder.

 

* * *

 

“Talked to Monty over the phone last night. Claims you’re turning into a blue stocking, whatever that means, and that I should take you out more often” Bucky commented the next morning.

“How the hell is he getting this all the way over there?” Steve wondered.

“You got me, pal, but if even the Brits are noticing your lack of social life then it must be pretty awful. What with being cooped up in here with little ole me all the time” Bucky replied grinning.

Steve rolled his eyes and turned to flip open the morning paper.

“Stark said the same thing.”

“You sure you don’t want another dance with Carter?” Bucky inquires.

Steve shakes his head without looking up.

“Yeah and so’s she if you hadn’t noticed.”

Bucky smirks.

“I knew she was sweet on that fella from the SSR” he said. “Seemed like a decent guy, so good on her. What about that girl Colleen, the one who sent us that sweet letter?”

“I don’t think she’s my type to be honest” Steve answered, flipping the page over. “She doesn’t know about Peggy and the SSR, and it’d be kinda hard to date someone I’d have to hide so much of myself from.”

“Think most of us are in that boat, pal” Bucky concurred. “Doesn’t mean we have to stop living though. Why don’t we go out dancing Friday night? I can get one of the gals from around the neighborhood and you can take Becca out. You’re one of the family, so everyone knows you aren’t sweet on her, and she’ll get to go out without Pa giving her the third degree.”

“Alright Buck” Steve said resignedly. “Stark already said I should watch myself in case the reporters start making up stories about me.”

“Hate to break it to ya, punk, but they’ve been doing that since long before we came back” Bucky assured him. “Easiest thing to do is give ‘em a real boring show. Let them think you’re still just All-American as pie when you’re not visiting kids or fighting Nazis.”

“Thought maybe it would stop after the fighting was over” Steve admitted.

“Slim chance of that when the whole world thinks you’re some kind of super hero like in the weeklies” Bucky leaned in and put a hand on his shoulder. “Could be worse after what we’ve been through. Coulda been labeled spies instead after somehow getting outta some top secret Soviet base alive.”

“Think they tried that when they debriefed us, Bucky. Peggy would’ve already told them I was a crumby liar, not the least because we were so goddamn tired after all of it.”

Bucky snorted.

“Least we hit ‘the Motherland’ closer to springtime, otherwise we might’ve completely frozen our asses off out there.”

“To be honest the serum made it harder for me to tell exactly how cold it was.”

“Which is why I’m glad you were around to keep the heat up, pal.”

“Is that what I am to you Barnes, your personal blanket warmer?”

“’fraid so, Rogers. Maybe if you’re real nice I’ll even let you shine my shoes later.”

Steve kicked him under the table.

“That’s no way to speak to your Captain, jerk” he says mock seriously.

“Huh. All I see here’s a punk kid from Brooklyn who thinks he’s one of them tough guy war heroes, and is still too damn stubborn to run away from a fight” Bucky countered.

“Kinda like the wise-ass jerk I’ve got at my 3 o’clock who used to jump right into those fights just to make sure I got out alive.”

“There wasn’t much of a choice really” Bucky said pointedly with a raised eyebrow and a fond smile. “Even if it meant coming stupidly close to getting my ass kicked at least a dozen times a week. Becca said she didn’t think my mug could’ve gotten any uglier than that time you picked a fight with those goons for hassling the ticket girl outside the Paramount.”

Steve’s smile was sunshine bright and it enveloped Bucky to his core.

“Didn’t stop you from being my hero, busted lip and all” Steve said, the words slipping off his tongue without him even thinking about it. The honest feeling in that reply making Bucky sit bolt upright in his chair, azure eyes glued to his friend’s face.

Steve’s expression shifted from shock to horror and then held steadfast at fear, his body taking on a more rigid stance, complexion noticeably paler as his eyes fell back to the paper crumpled in the tightness of his shaking grip. It was too late to run now and even if he did, he’d have to come back and face Bucky sooner or later and then they’d have to have that talk about him getting Steve out of his life as quickly as possible.

Bucky avidly studied his friend’s face before deciding whether to tip the scales and take the risk that lay temptingly before him. Steve’s evident distress and obvious physical restraint of his own anxiety, were able to convince him that it was enough, that he might, could, be accepted.

Steve’s thoughts cut off as he felt a hand move across his cheek, tracing the lines of his near translucent stubble, fingers positioning themselves to draw his face up to meet Bucky, whose body his now bent over the corner of the table hovering over Steve’s. It takes a few seconds before Steve braves a look at his friend and finds his gaze now tinted a deep cerulean and his pupils are wider and darker than before.

“You really think so, Stevie?” Bucky asks, mouth hovering inches from Steve’s, their breath mingling together warmly. It’s all Steve can do to keep from falling into the clear blueness of those eyes completely, his guard is already dropped and he can’t find it in himself to move away when the warm breath against his lips is so inviting. “No fooling?”

“You’ve always been…s’not something I can help, Buck” Steve replies and Bucky edges in closer, causing the blonde’s eyes to shut slowly as he moves instinctively toward that enticing warmth. His lips feel awkward against the newfound softness of Bucky’s and until he adjusts himself to get a better angle, unconsciously moving a hand up to slide against Bucky’s shoulder. Years of tension being melded together to converge in that one moment.

Steve stands and pulls Bucky with him toward the nearest couch. Bucky pushes him down onto it and slides into Steve’s lap, his erection becoming fairly evident as he moves against him.

“We’re going to talk about this after” Steve insisted between breaths, after they separate for air. “This is…I want you, Buck. I’ve always wanted that cocky stupid face of yours more’n anything else.”

“Same goes for you, scrawny ass or not, Stevie” Bucky retorted staring into Steve’s slightly glazed eyes, as the blonde moves a hand under his shirt. Bucky moans in encouragement as Steve shifts deeper in and starts to stroke him under his pants. He retaliates by tearing open the buttons on Steve’s shirt and dipping in to curl his tongue around Steve’s nipple for an exploratory taste.

Steve’s reaction to it is actually kind of cute as the sound he makes is somewhere between a gasp and a hiccup, and eventually Bucky works the shirt off altogether, allowing him free reign to give both of Steve’s nipples equal amounts of attention. Bucky can feel the ridges of Steve’s chest as he circles the right peck with his tongue and drags an edge of teeth over it in one quick movement. Steve’s answering groan is one of pleasure and he digs a nail into the head of Bucky’s dick in a knee jerk reaction, not that Bucky was complaining. No he was pressing eagerly into Steve’s hand wanting to feel more of what those perfectly smooth fingers were doing to him.

“Do…do that again” he sighed heavily into Steve’s ear. “Wanted to do this back when…but I didn’t know if you’d have me.”

Steve’s eyes go wide.

“Back when I was small and-”

“You were you and you were all I wanted” Bucky replied closing his eyes. “M’crazy for ya, punk. Always have been.”

Steve kisses him chastely, sweetly, and says “I think you were one of the only people who ever did.”

“Their loss” Bucky murmured as Steve pulled him into a second more energetic kiss.

Then Bucky’s hand drifted lower and shifted its attention toward the bulge pressing against the front of Steve’s trousers, rubbing playfully against the seam, giving Steve barely an edge of friction, leaving him frustratingly unsatisfied.

“You want more, punk? Like this do you?”

“I want…whatever you’ll give me Bu-ucky!” Steve managed.

Bucky brought his mouth up and kissed him, wary of the sound carrying through their walls, muffling Steve’s reaction to his attentions.

“Take it easy, Stevie. Need to be quiet so no one knows what we’ve got up to” Bucky whispered soothingly as he undid the button on Steve’s trousers and slipped his hand inside the undergarment to press a hand to Steve’s length. Moving his hand in to feel more of that warm full skin and rapidly increase the friction at all the right angles until he had Steve thrusting forward, jerking desperately into his hand, until Steve’s coming into Bucky’s hand, looking up at him in the after with wide blue irises and a dazed expression plastered to his face.

When Steve comes back to himself the look on that face becomes curious, he turns his attention to Bucky’s need, making his hand move more fluidly over Bucky’s length with a firm touch and intuitively curling those long luxurious fingers in just the right way that it nearly causes Bucky to white out straight then. Steve gently speeds up the pace, moving his fingers to rub over the head of Bucky’s dick, and steadily drives his friend over the edge, Bucky straining into his hand with a continuous utter of Steve’s name on his lips.

“Thought you believed those nuns at Sunday school about men who love men going to hell.” Bucky said when he’d managed to recover his breath, lying half draped across Steve on the couch, head pillowed on Steve’s left shoulder.

Steve shook his head, moving his face down closer to Bucky’s to stare at the amazement flecked in those nearly incandescent azure eyes.

“Those were the same people who thought I wouldn’t live to see fifteen, Bucky. You did. More than that, you saw me through every bout of illness I had, especially after Ma was gone. I may have my beliefs, but I learned a long time ago that other people had no business telling me what was important and who I should love” he answered, leaning down and planting a short sweet kiss on his friend’s cheek.

“My reason was a lot simpler” Bucky admitted the barest flush appearing on his face. “I just never liked being told what to do. Guys with stronger beliefs went through the same hell that I did when Hydra brought us in and tried to take us apart from the inside. Got me thinking that Hydra sure as hell wasn’t being struck down then and there for doing things that no person ever should, so how could love be considered a worse sin than all that?”

“You’re right, it wouldn’t make much sense.”

“Besides, I’d been stuck on you for ages, Rogers, I nearly kissed you the time you came to get us out of that Hydra camp.”

Steve turned slightly red.

“Would have too if my stomach hadn’t started rebelling and my feet hadn’t kept trying to sweep out from under me” Bucky confirmed.

“We were surrounded by over a hundred newly freed prisoners” Steve pointed out doubtfully.

“Dragging you into the woods for a mock scouting mission would’ve fixed that real quick” Bucky countered looking up at him with a wink.

Steve couldn’t help it when the blush returned to his cheeks in full force.

 

* * *

 

Bucky takes Steve on a couple of dates disguised as night’s out, which weren’t that unusual pre-war and don’t really phase anyone who knows them. They re-visit Coney Island and this time Steve manages to hold his own on the roller coaster, because it was nothing compared to gliding down a zip-line toward an oncoming train. If anything Bucky was the one who felt uncomfortable with high places now after the fall.

Steve occasionally gets asked for an autograph

“I want to take this slow, Stevie” Bucky told him when Steve asked if Bucky wanted to take things a step further like he’d always done with all of his dates after the third or fourth go round. “Now that you’re really my fella, I want to enjoy takin’ you out and doin’ little things where no one else can see.”

“So do I” Steve admitted with some awkwardness. “It’s just, you’re a part of this too and I want to think that you’re getting what you want out of it, out of us.”

Bucky put a hand on his shoulder, smiled a soft little smile and said “I want all of you, Steve, not just the parts that involve tumblin’ beneath the sheets. That’s what being with someone’s supposed to be like. You weren’t…you weren’t exactly wrong when you used to scold me for not taking going steady with those other dames seriously. I didn’t think much of taking things a step further if’n they didn’t mind it, because I knew we weren’t in it for keeps.”

“Oh” Steve answered feeling more than a little taken aback by that. After a moment his surprised look turned into a smile. “So that was for me then?”

Bucky nodded.

“Always, punk. Even if I never got to tell you how I feel about you, you would’ve never really left me.”

“It’s the same for me, though I only knew it for sure after the train and by then I could barely forgive myself for not catching you.”

“We’ve been through this, punk. If you’d fallen too then we wouldn’t be here now” Bucky sighed. “They’d’ve had us both in one straight go of it and you managed to find me again anyway.”

“I know, it’s the only thing that keeps me from dreaming it some nights.”

“I’m hard to get rid of” Bucky quipped trying to lighten the mood.

“Don’t I know it” Steve said and Bucky knew that all he needed to keep his own thoughts from dwelling darker was the smile that came back to Steve’s face afterward.

A few weeks later, when Steve decides that he is ready to take things further, they don’t quite finish dinner until much later that night, because Bucky’s getting a close personal tour of Steve’s serum induced enhancements, while being held firmly against the mattress as he proves that every one of them is in tantalizingly perfect working order. Bucky learns fairly quickly that Steve isn’t at all shy with his tongue when it comes to intimate activities that interest him, particularly ones involving the best friend he’s apparently been head over heels for all these years, as the confessions he kisses into Bucky’s shoulder, chest, and thigh are meant to emphasize. A sentiment Bucky returns wholeheartedly, doing his level best to reciprocate and make sure that Steve feels good, like he used to fantasize about doing, during the Depression, the War, and even in flashes after his presumed death before the Soviets blacked it all out.

He may’ve had a little fun back in Brooklyn before the war, but Bucky’s pretty sure none of the dames or back alley fellas ever made his head so goddam full of stars the way Steve managed to with his focused determination to make up for any inexperience and adorably inarticulate fumbling. Bucky doesn’t know how to tell him right that moment that it’s the feel of Steve alone that does him in, because there’s really only one person he could ever imagine trusting with all of him, the only person Bucky can remember ever wanting to have that close for more than a few nights of drinks, dancing, and rambles in the dark.

 

* * *

 

Bucky blinked.

“You wanna draw me?”

Steve nodded.

“Well go ahead then, nothing’s ever stopped you before.”

Steve looked at him with nervously wide blue eyes.

“I want to draw _just_ you, Bucky” he elaborated, face turning slightly red. “Nothing else.”

“You tryin’a make a pass at me, Rogers?” Bucky grinned, wiggling his eyebrows dramatically.

“Maybe” Steve said in a lower tone. “I want to sketch all of you.”

Bucky shivered at the determination in his tone and the sharpness in those deep blue eyes.

“All you had to do was ask, Steve.”

“Just make sure to stay still, jerk.”

“Long as you make sure to get my good side, punk.”

Of course Steve’s eyes are already glued to every one of the sensual curves of Bucky’s body by the time he’s stripped completely, and catches himself getting caught up in retracing the mesmerizing contours of Bucky’s chest and jawline several different times before hurriedly moving on to the rest of him.

 

* * *

 

Dum Dum sends Bucky a postcard telling him to visit upstate, promising some good whisky, for New Years and tells him to bring along his “tall gorgeous blond”.

Bucky chuckles and rolls his eyes.

“Typical Dugan.”

Steve snorts derisively when he reads it and says “Not your girl, Barnes.”

“Not yours either, Rogers, so don’t go getting any fancy ideas about takin’ me out just ta show me off.”

Steve punches him lightly in the shoulder and smiles. They go back to sifting through their mail.

Peggy sends them a very specifically worded congratulatory Christmas card that year that makes Steve blush and Bucky grin unashamedly.

“Why does she always have to throw that in there?” Steve sighs while reading it. “We couldn’t have afforded anything with a fancy name to it back then to save our lives, Buck. So how was I supposed to know what Stark meant by it?”

“Doesn’t make it any less funny though” Bucky reminded him with a light smile. “And c’mon, Stevie this is Howard Stark we’re talking about. A guy like that’s gonna to use snazzy euphemisms on the dames, because the fact that he has money says they’ll still be all over him at the end of the night no matter how cheesy he sounds. And fondue, seriously? I think the only reason she shot the shield ‘n not you is because you insisted on using a multi-flavored dip as a valid counter argument to getting some action with the office blonde.”

“I swear I didn’t mean to, she kissed me!”

“Right.”

“Bug off, jerk.”

The next one she sends them includes an open job offer to outline and implement a training program for incoming agents recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D., which she’d been made director of thanks to the support of Howard Stark and a commendation from Colonel Chester Phillips.

Bucky eyes it suspiciously, still thinking of Zola, but Steve tells her they’ll consider it.

 

* * *

 

Howard Stark accidentally figures out the nature of their relationship at his Christmas party.

Steve gets caught under the mistletoe by one of Stark’s lady friends and automatically looks at Bucky first as if to get permission, while most guests assumed it was Howard he’d turned to, before giving her a hasty peck on the lips. Other people simply assumed that Sergeant Barnes was sweet on her and that Captain America wasn’t about to fight over a girl that his best friend wanted, because everyone knew Howard Stark wasn’t a man to be held down by just one pretty face.

“I can get you in touch with her if you want” Howard offered after he’d dragged Bucky away to show him the new prototype for his arm. “She’s a gorgeous gal, every aspect of her.”

Bucky waved him off.

“Thanks, but she’s not my kinda dame.”

Stark fiddles with the arm a bit to show how the different mechanisms in the joints work.

“Dugan claims you have a thing for blondes.”

“Dugan’s just tryin’ to bust your chops” Bucky retorted. “Last year he swore I was stuck on gingers.”

“Then what was that look between you and Rogers about, if you ain’t sweet on her then he must be” Stark returned.

“Must be” Bucky muttered turning away, trying to conceal his anxiety toward this line of questioning.

“You got a problem with Rogers getting out more?” Stark wondered.

“No, Steve can do what he wants” Bucky replied, trying to curb that nervous feeling in his stomach that was starting to tighten around him.

“I think you’re more involved than you let on” Stark pressed, causing Bucky to turn and grip him by the collar with his flesh hand, leveling a glare at him. “Take it easy, Barnes, don’t snap your cap. You know I’m not the one to throw stones in this type of situation. I’ve paid visits to both sides of the tracks before, if you get my meaning.”

Bucky loosened his grip.

“You-you don’t tell anyone that Captain America does, you understand.”

“Fine by me, no knows Steve Roger’s is your guy.”

Howard sighed and stepped out of Bucky’s flagged grip.

“Dugan used to say during the war that no one watched Roger’s back the way you did. When you crashed and burned, your unit knew it was only a matter of time before Steve did. We all did, even Carter, though she held out for some time, thinking he’d pull through on that last mission anyway” he explained. “Everyone who knows you knows you’re two of a kind, so it wasn’t much of a stretch, pal. What you do on your own time is yours, just don’t let Uncle Sam know about it. Maybe tell Rogers to take those baby blues of his down a notch while you’re in public together.”

“Can do, Stark” Bucky felt a grin forming on his lips. “You’re nearly articulate when you’re buzzed.”

Howard laughed.

“Same to you, pal. I’m not the one who’s taken America’s most eligible bachelor off the market.”

 

* * *

 

The surgery to remove the old prototype and attach the new to Bucky’s shoulder occurs a few months later early in 1950, and goes off without a hitch.

Stark makes sure to emphasize the arm’s improvements including its enhanced dexterity during the first post-op visit. Something that makes Steve blush and Bucky grin shamelessly throughout it.

 

* * *

 

The first time something off happens it’s the spring of 1950, and the night they’re out dancing with Bucky’s sister Rebecca and Sally Watson.

When Steve and Bucky return that night to see their door open ajar, they know _know_ something’s not right and hightail it out of there as quietly as possible, because all of their guns are in there locked up, but inaccessibly out of their hands.

Mr. Lu in 23B lets them use his party line and it’s twenty minutes before the beat cops make it to their building. The police search the apartment afterwards and find nothing amiss besides a broken lamp.

Bucky never leaves home unarmed again. In fact, he scraps the guns left in apartment, buys new ones and keeps them at the range in the veteran’s post bar. Steve’s shield is undamaged and seemingly unmolested because of the nature of the vibranium, but he asks Stark to give it a going over just to be certain.

“We’re going to check under every loose board and crack a person could fit something into” Bucky says when he comes home with a full box of tools.

When Steve looks at him curiously he says “They didn’t steal anything, Steve, not one thing. What does that say to you?”

Steve bites his lip in contemplation.

“You think they broke the lamp on purpose” he replied after a moment of thought, “to distract us from the fact that they didn’t take anything…since they didn’t find what they were looking for-”

“You know it and I know it, punk-”

“-because we weren’t here. Damn it all. Everything was starting to feel normal, like just before you left.” Steve admitted with a grimace.

“I guess some things you can’t get back, no matter how hard you fight for them” Bucky said as he set to work checking for loose boards. Steve sighed and walked over to pluck the Anson Gold pliers out of the box and started kneading the cracks with it.

They find two, one is easily located, while the second is well-placed. Instead of destroying them and possibly alerting their creators to this destruction, they use Bucky’s arm to try and block out the receptors signal and leave the bugs between the floorboards of strip club in downtown Manhattan.

 

* * *

 

The second time their apartment is broken into, it’s 1951, and they’re in bed for the night. Neither of them are light sleepers. Steve’s enhanced hearing picks out the sound of moving feet up the stairs and down the hall, at least five minutes before they get the door open. He guesses the landlord’s spare key wasn’t all that difficult to swipe and curses himself for not having thought of it sooner.

Steve nudges Bucky awake with a whisper of “Bucky, we’ve got company.”

Bucky’s breathing deepens as his friend’s voice stirs him into full wakefulness.

“With you to the end of the line, Stevie” he murmured, grappling for his gun as Steve hoisted his shield onto his arm and into an active position.

Bucky opens a window as the haze in his mind gives way to pertinent thoughts, more specifically the chances of their assailants using smoke bombs to disorient them before charging in afterward. They do, and Steve uses his shield to muffle the effects of the smoke as he tosses it out the already open window.

When their seven visible attackers charge through the front, they’re met with loaded guns and the solid impact of Steve’s shield.

Bucky gets a few accurate, but non-fatal shots in before he’s hit.

Steve breaks the hand, shoulder, and collarbone of the first guy who reaches for Bucky with a needle in hand. While Bucky recovers and downs a man who steps up with a second syringe. The rest of them go down when Steve’s shield knocks them there, leaving him with only a bleeding shoulder and a hole in his leg with no arterial damage.

Bucky has a gash to the side of his hip from a bullet gone astray, but he barely feels it with the adrenaline pumping through him in his rush to cover Steve and stop the blood flow from his injuries. Only dissuaded from this mission, temporarily, by making damn fucking sure that every one of their assailants are disarmed and insensible.

 

* * *

 

They don’t call the police this time, the neighbors do after hearing multiple gunshots.

Bucky and Steve are transported to the hospital to be treated as are the multiple unconscious agents strewn across their apartment.

Military intelligence is there to escort them to a predetermined location after their release, followed closely by Edwin Jarvis. The only reason they aren’t taken into protective custody then and there is Stark’s offer to let them stay in one of his safe houses, once they dig the bullet out of Steve’s leg and the nurses wrap them both in gauze and bandages, despite Steve’s protests. They are kept overnight for observation and interviewed the next day as part of the ongoing investigation.

The evidence points to a Russian sleeper cell with Hydra leanings, none of the evidence can be traced back to Zola, which worries Steve and causes Bucky to sleep with a knife under his pillow, though it’s sheathed at his bedmates insistence. Fortunately, as Stark’s butler is all too happy to inform them, Peggy Carter isn’t as convinced of Arnim Zola’s innocence as the FBI seemed to be.

Bucky and Steve managed to slip back to Brooklyn to visit with the rest of the Barnes family with Jarvis’s aid and learned of Rebecca’s engagement to one of the local boys, whom Bucky insisted upon meeting and interrogating despite his father’s assurances, and the acceptance of Ruth’s application to attend one of the local universities to study music.

Winifred Barnes fretted about her boys as usual, since she’d come to think of Steve as a second son, and sent them away with more food than they knew what to do with.

“You can’t fool me, Steven. The more boys grow the more of an appetite they have” she said. “I’ll bet my best cake recipe that what they did to you effected you more than you’re telling us.”

Steve shuffled his feet awkwardly, trying not to look as guilty as he felt.

“Just watch out for each other like you always did” she told him ruffling his hair a bit. She turned to her own son. “You too, James. I don’t want another letter telling me that something happened to you.”

Bucky tried to smile disarmingly, something that never ever seemed to fool his mother, while trying not to wince at the idea of her getting a third condolence letter informing her of his death. Although he had to wonder if she’d actually believe it after the first couple of times Bucky’d come back alive in spite of that.

The headlines mention the break-in and tie it to the actions of Russian spies trying to eliminate one of America’s beloved national icons, causing flowers, cards, and other memorabilia to be sent to both Steve and Bucky’s apartment building and the home of Bucky’s parents.

Steve does his best to write a reply for every card and bunch of flowers, but stops sorting through the memorabilia after he finds three underskirts and two bras in the mix, something that causes him to flush bright red and Bucky to double-over laughing when he finds out.

 

* * *

 

“All right boys, cards down. I need to know what we’re up against and where the shots are coming from. Dugan’s been keeping his ear to the ground, but he can only give me so much” Stark explained looking up at the two of them expectantly.

Steve and Bucky share a brief look before turning back to Howard.

“We think Zola made Bucky’s first prosthetic and has contacts within Russian intelligence” Steve admitted guiltily.

“Something a bit more transparent than those vague little hints would’ve been more of a help there, Rogers” Howard said putting a hand to his forehead to restrain himself from rolling his eyes.

“He didn’t want the bigwigs in the SSR to think I was nuts” Bucky explained. “We’d just come out of hell. Again. We weren’t exactly flush with evidence as it was or…high on trust.”

“Which brings me to another issue my friend. You know Carter’s going to have your head for this, right?” Howard remarked staring pointedly at Steve. “Better have that shield on hand to mitigate the damage to that All-American figure of yours if you catch my drift.”

“Not if I take the fall for it” Bucky muttered, causing Steve to give him a look. Bucky waved it off. He’d rather not have Peggy thinking this was about Steve taking everything on himself instead of the truth, that the two of them had been completely paranoid coming back and didn’t know how to explain his hazy memory of Zola attaching the arm to him without sounding insane.

“It might’ve helped considering this whole time I was convinced Rogers had a fixation on Zola, because of some long-term revenge fantasy” Howard relayed.

“Wouldn’t be that long term” Steve mumbled.

“I’ve had Jarvis move all of your things and close out the lease” Stark continued, raising an eyebrow. “I can get you on the line to Barnes family if you want to let them know where you’ve run off to.”

“Already did” Bucky echoed.

“Fine, fine” Stark waved a hand. “To be frank Barnes, neither your or Rogers are crazy. Turns out Schmidt didn’t like the idea that the serum couldn’t cure him if he lost a limb, to the point where he was paranoid about it. He made Zola look into it and start producing prototypes the moment that Captain America showed up and that became a real possibility.”

“That’s why he had one on hand to give to Bucky” Steve answered.

Howard nodded.

“Turns out he had some of these babies hidden away in case Schmidt was incapacitated” he reiterated. “Carter garnered information about the two of your during the interrogation of a couple of Russian defectors six months back. All closed room stuff and they gave away the locations of Zola’s hidden caches in East Berlin. The debriefing afterwards was incredibly enlightening.”

“War has more than two sides to it, Stark, figured you knew that by now” Bucky remarked.

“More than I used to, pal” Stark flicked him a sardonic look. “The point is there was a reason the arm was degrading. He rushed the surgery and attached a prototype to you directly after they amputated your arm. Theoretically because he wanted to set a few temporary connections before your nerves could heal and the skin regrew around the edge of the bone.”

Bucky winced.

“I’m kinda glad I barely remember any of that. The desire to shoot that man is difficult enough to repress as it is.”

They all knew from experience the grizzly process involved with cutting off a limb. Everyone in camp had been privy to those types of medical evacs when they happened.

“I’m working on Moc. 2” Stark informed them. “In the meantime Zola’s been transferred to the CIA’s detention center for the time being. Had a bit of help from Phillips with that and a few of his more powerful friends in D.C.”

“They’re hoping to recruit him” Steve put in. It was a statement not an inquiry. “Then they better make damn sure not to make the same mistake that Shield did by giving him open access.”

“There were routine checks, Rogers, we didn’t just give him free range.”

“Well apparently that wasn’t enough” Steve pressed.

“He’s no longer our problem” Stark said dismissively.

“Why am I not convinced” Steve muttered under his breath, low enough for only Bucky to hear him.

Bucky favored his friend with a quick glance.

“Then what is?” he prompted.

“Cleaning up what he left behind. Carter wants you two in her court yesterday.”

“Not your French maid, Stark.”

Bucky restrained himself from rolling his eyes and felt Steve’s hand come up to rest on his shoulder he moved to stand beside him. They shared a look.

“So when do we start?” Steve asked.

“You just did, Cap.”

 

* * *

 

Peggy refrains from shooting at him, claiming that Bucky would probably try to block the shots and didn’t want the bullets to ricochet off his metal arm.

“That’s real considerate of you, Carter. I always knew you liked me better than Steve over here” Bucky remarked with a grin.

“Nice to see you as well, James” Peggy answered giving him an exasperatedly patient smile that for Peggy, was nearly affectionate.

Steve had to stifle his laugh behind a cough.

 

* * *

 

It takes a year for Peggy and her team, which now included Steve and Bucky, to clean house. They ferret out Zola’s allies among the science division stationed at Camp Lehigh, as well as locate and dispose of his numerous unauthorized projects, including a supercomputer that was keyed to Hydra and its Russian counterpart.

After that mission is complete, the Brooklyn boys take Peggy up on her offer to work for, the Strategic Homeland Interventions, Enforcement and Logistics Division, or S.H.I.E.L.D as Morita referred to it when he teased Steve, and to design and implement an improved training program for Shield staff.

It takes them six months, but Steve and Bucky finally iron out a training program with Peggy’s administrators, for incoming S.H.I.E.L.D agents, which included but wasn’t limited to, mandatory practice shooting moving targets and a camping trip meant to build on their wilderness survival skills and team work that lasts two weeks. Bucky wanted it to be a month, but understood better than most the necessity of including knife training and interrogation assessment in equal parts. Trainees were separated into teams containing male and female recruits for sparring, survival training, and surface level seduction, which Bucky insisted it was necessary to be able to do with men as well as women for missions that required cross-dressing as a means of stealth and procuring intel.

_“But isn’t that-”_

_“This isn’t about pride or religion, gentlemen, it’s about getting out alive with the information your team needs to complete the mission. The Russians aren’t concerned with eternal damnation and neither should you be.”_

_“Yes Sir.”_

The captains of each team had to earn their title by proving they disable Bucky’s prosthetic arm without injury during a sparring match.

_“I believe you owe me a quid, James.”_

_“Those dames of yours were impressive, Carter. We should get them to shake Stark down as part of a training exercise some time.”_

_“I told you not to take that bet, Buck. Stands to reason Peggy’s protégé’s would be as tough as she is.”_

_“Well, Hodge was considerably lighter to put down than I’d estimated at the time.”_

_“Still knocked the socks off the other candidates, myself included” Steve replied with a nostalgic smile._

At Steve’s request an open job offer was conveyed to rest of the Howling Commandos as well.

Gabe Jones, Dum Dum Dugan, and Jim Morita took Peggy up on that offer, while Dernier, who’d recently immigrated to the United States was content to work at his cousin’s business and keep tabs on their activities through his constant contact with Gabe and the occasional drink on Christmas Eve.

Falsworth had turned down an offer to work with British intelligence to immigrate to the U.S. and take up management of one of his family’s business interests, an import company in Connecticut, and insisted that he was quite content to stay there. He mentioned, however, that he could be persuaded to answer a call for assistance if he were ever needed.

 

* * *

 

Peggy Carter marries Daniel Sousa in 1952 with Angie as her maid of honor, five months shy of the anniversary of Steve and Bucky’s return from captivity and two months before Rebecca Barnes became Rebecca Barnes-Proctor, the first in her family to keep both of her surnames.

Steve caught the bouquet at both receptions causing a minor media field day.

_“It’s good to see you again, Captain.”_

_“I wouldn’t have missed Peggy’s big day for the world, Agent Sousa” Steve replied._

_“It’s Daniel.”_

_“Then please call me Steve.”_

_Sousa smiled._

_“It's funny you should say that, because you're the reason me and a lot of other guys are even still here…I never got the chance to tell you a few years back, that it was my battalion you saved after that blockade had us trapped in. You broke through the line that’d been keeping us pinned for months and kept the krauts from making a final push and putting the screws to us.”_ _Sousa explained, proffering a hand._

_“Sousa...Daniel, I was just doing what I could” Steve insisted._

_"So you should know that I’ll damn well never forgot the man who saved my ass out there. Peggy told me about you and Barnes and I want you to know that if you ever get yourselves in a jam, I’ll be there to help you out of it. Whatever it takes.”_

_Steve visibly froze for a moment, but recovered quickly and shook his hand._

_“Thank you. We need people in our corner in case…I don’t want Bucky to deal with the brunt of it if they ever find out about us.”_

_“Neither of you will if Peggy or I can help it.” Just so you understand, you saved a thousand men that day and I owe you at least that many drinks” Daniel insisted gestured to the bar._

_“I’d settle for just a couple” Steve answered, “and only if you join me.”_

_“That I can do, just don’t tell my wife I started without her.”_

Bucky and Steve take this as a sign and move out of Stark’s safe house and into an apartment complex with high visibility and paid security in Washington D.C., which their combined S.H.I.E.L.D. salaries now allow them to afford. Bucky insists on checking every board, furniture seam, and circuit board for bugs with the help of the Commandos. They find fifteen in total, but he’s completely sure he missed a few that were better concealed.

Stark gives them a device that jams the frequency of any listening devices within a two mile radius as a housewarming gift, something Steve is sure the senators living in their building are exceedingly grateful for.

When Steve and Bucky relocated together people take notice, but with Peggy’s help and Howard’s contacts among several reporters, they managed to convince press and public that Bucky acts as Steve’s bodyguard as well as his brother-in-arms. A story runs nationally about the two of them being inseparable from the playground and the battlefield and Bucky makes sure to give a seemingly off-the-cuff quote about promising Sarah Rogers on her deathbed to look out for Steve.

A few months later another article runs, this time proclaiming _Captain America’s Two Great Love’s Cross the Alter Without Him_. The article claims that Steve’s failed relationship with Peggy was the result of residual feelings for Rebecca Barnes, his Brooklyn Sweetheart back home. The two women’s marriages being so close together was the result, the author claimed, of Steve Rogers’ inability to choose between the two resulting in him giving both of them up forever.

Bucky laughed so hard he nearly cracked a rib falling out of his chair. He cut out the article and put it next to the Victory Day headlines up on the wall.

 

* * *

 

Steve and Bucky still listen to Dodgers games over the radio, occasionally sneaking back to Brooklyn to catch a game and spend the night with Bucky’s family. They also insist on getting each of the Commandos to go to a game with them while they’re all within an hour’s drive of New York City, even Falsworth who persisted that he was primarily a fan of America football because of its kinship to rugby.

The day the team’s change of ownership was announced in 1957, along with the plan to move the Dodgers to Los Angeles began nearly two months of mourning in Steve and Bucky’s apartment. The two of them insisted on making every last game until the end of the season.

Dugan, Morita, Howard, and Gabe were sympathetic to their plight, while Peggy and the rest of the original team just shook their heads and let it go. Howard was a numbers guy, so baseball appealed to him in that way, while Dugan and Morita understood the importance of having a hometown team in the major leagues and how sacrilegious it was to uproot one from a consistently loyal fan base.

 

* * *

 

S.H.I.E.L.D. became the intelligence division that was called in to investigate incidents involving the advanced technology that had sprouted seamlessly from Hydra’s multiple heads. This quickly grew to dispelling disturbances initiated by the discovery of humans with unusual abilities that were later classified under the term “mutants” starting in 1962, and dealing with incidents involving supernatural elements.

S.H.I.E.L.D. was the first agency to recognize the existence of magic after several eyebrow raising incidents involving sorcerers, ghosts, and a kraken.

There was even an ongoing internal debated with the agency about the possible real life existence of the Norse and Greek gods. Peggy Carter theorized that it was the result of an earth-born scientific phenomenon. While Steve Rogers insisted it was possible that artifacts like the blue stone used by Johann Schmidt to power his Hydra technology, could have been left behind by older, more powerful beings, though he drew at calling them gods, because in his mind there was still only one of those and he sure as hell didn’t wear a headdress.

The Howling Commandos perform their share of missions with their personal teams, more specifically those tied to the supernatural, because of their experiences going up against Hydra’s obscure weaponry. Jim Morita and Gabe Jones also took it upon themselves to improve upon S.H.I.E.L.D.’s gadgetry by inventing small devices that could block out sound, temporarily deafening the user, with the purpose of minimizing the damage from a blast on one’s hearing in combat. This idea originated from Gabe’s penchant for using explosives to blow out locks rather than picking them.

_“Was it necessary to blow out the guard posts when Barnes already sniped ‘em all?” came Monty’s accented tone over the radio._

_“Yes sir, Lance Sergeant Falsworth” Gabe answered with his cheekiest salute. “Couldn’t risk them being re-manned before our men finished the mission."_

_There was an exasperated sigh_

_“Very well, carry on, Jones. I’ll tell Mrs. Rogers your concerns about his skills of observation.”_

_“Negative Sergeant, just covering all bases so he doesn’t need to worry his pretty little head about it.”_

_“I heard that Jones. Your ass is mine when we get back” Bucky chimed in._

_“Won’t Cap be jealous?”_

_“Not when you’ll be the one buying the drinks after I clean your clock on the sparring mat.”_

 

* * *

 

“Gabe is that-?”

“A giant clam, just where Monty said it was” Gabe confirmed. “We’re going to have to call in the Navy after all.”

“Stark’s gonna be pissed he missed this one” Bucky remarked. “At least it’s further out into the Atlantic.”

“Unlike those merpeople on Long Island” Gabe agreed with a chuckle. “I’m surprised Cap didn’t turn redder than that seaweed when the women came onshore.”

“Don’t let him fool you, Steve spent more time in dressing rooms with half-naked girls on that USO tour than he’ll ever admit to” Bucky shot back. “He just likes to pretend he’s still modest.”

 

* * *

 

“Steve? You look like death warmed over” Bucky commented as he greeted a worn out Steve when he arrived home from an extended mission assignment.

“About that” Steve huffed, looking a bit pale and red-eyed, his blonde hair having taken on a more dull sheen, that Bucky assumed was from sweating too much as Steve did tend to push himself a little too far at times.

Bucky leaned in to plant a chaste kiss on Steve’s soft lips before he could say more, resulting in maroon sparks flying around Steve before dissipating.

“Steve, what in the hell was that just now?”

Steve touched his lips and smiled as color seemed to flow back into his complexion.

“Stark’s been trying to figure out how to break the curse all week and you just did it in a matter of seconds, Buck” he said, pulling Bucky into a tight, slightly breathtaking, embrace.

Bucky blinked, then raised a decisive eyebrow, arms folded over his chest.

“What _kind_ of curse?”

“Um…it might’ve been a death curse, but Stark was sure-”

“Steven Grant Rogers” Bucky said, not quite seething. “You mean to tell me that some sorcerer-”

“Evil fairy-”

“Cast a curse on you and you couldn’t’ve told me about it? We’ve got at least ten code crackers working in the office at all times and you didn’t think to send a line? Maybe give us a heads up so we can start trying to work out a counter for it?”

Steve smiled sheepishly.

“I didn’t want to worry you when Stark thought he had it figured out” he admitted.

“Well did he?”

“No, but I didn’t want to risk the message being compromised” Steve explained, shuffling his feet slightly.

“It was still a completely dumb thing to do, Steve. Howard can’t work magic any more than we can.”

“I realize that, but I had a team to look after and…I hate worrying you, Buck.”

Bucky sighed and rolled his eyes, before giving in and putting an arm on Steve’s shoulder.

“We need a safe word for magic spells that we can transmit from anywhere just to warn the other for when we get home and might _might_ still be enspelled” Bucky commented lightly.

“What about Disney?”

“My vote’s on Snow White.”

“That’s two words, Bucky.”

“Doesn’t matter. How about Cinderella?”

“Peter Pan, no, pixie dust.”

“Too close to the original meaning of the code phrase. Snow White should at least be our code red.”

“Our options are very limited, why don’t we just stick with _mentioning_ Disney titles indiscriminately for now whenever the situation comes up.”

Bucky gave it a few moments consideration before he nodded.

“Fair enough.”

“You know the CIA’s going to decrypt our code eventually.”

“If only” Bucky grinned. “Can you imagine them trying to decode meaningless phrases from Peter Pan while trying to get a handle on our individual mission status?”

“No, but I’ve never been that tempted to draw undisclosed CIA code crackers before now” Steve admitted.

“You can sketch to your heart’s content after dinner” Bucky informs him. “It’s my night to cook and I made chicken soup.”

“Lead the way, Buck.”

The call to Stark the next morning was longer than Steve had expected it to be, because Howard kept breaking into laughter between phrases. Needless to say it was one of the more interesting mission reports Director Carter had to review that week.

 

* * *

 

List of Restrictions to be Adhered to _Immediately_ by S.H.I.E.L.D. Personnel, etc., etc.:

  1. Do not refer to Sergeant Barnes as Captain Rogers’ date, Mrs., or “main squeeze” while on missions, I don’t care how many pints of Brooklyn’s finest they’ve promised you.

 

  2. No flirting with the Mermaids on missions of diplomacy specifically involving their brothers, fathers or husbands, this means you Corporal Jones.

 

  3. No more daring Dugan to replace Sergeant Barnes sniper scopes with doctored kaleidoscopes, we need his aim focused appropriately upon the enemy, not friendlies with a death wish. That goes double for you Monsieur Dernier.

 

  4. Private Lorraine does _not_ have a standing mission to seduce any and all double-agents into leaving without payment or documentation, stop confusing the new recruits.

 

  5. Likewise for “getting to third base, because Captain America didn’t” which should not be registered as a reconnaissance mission and will henceforth be stripped from the books, this means you Sergeant Barnes.

 

  6. _Star Spangled Man With a Plan_ is not S.H.I.E.L.D.’s personal anthem and should not be wired to play at every hour on the hour past midnight to serenade the night staff.

 

  7. Using Shakespearian language to confuse the enemy when assigned an undercover mission in the U.K. is not advisable, nor does it evidence blending in with the “local culture”.

 

  8. In that same vein, Russian innuendos are not to be used for anything other than confusing the enemy, is that clear Sergeant Barnes.

 

  9. Captain Rogers’ possible recovery time after intimate activities is not to be speculated upon or subject to monthly wagers perpetuated by Mr. Dugan.

 

  10. The lyrics to _Metal-Armed Bloke With a Scope_ are banned on premises and should be relegated to off-duty hours at the pub.

 

  11. Captain Rogers serum does not allow him do any of the following: breathe fire, fly, communicate telepathically, drink the blood of his enemies, read minds, de-age himself, or see and be able to operate unregistered invisible weaponry.

 

  12. The anniversary of the Dodgers final game in Brooklyn is _not_ an official S.H.I.E.L.D. holiday, so please stop dropping roses at the gate, the locals are starting to think we’re actually in a legitimate mourning period.

 

  13. Stop convincing the new recruits that “fondue” is a code word for lunch hour just to make Captain Rogers blush, this means you Sergeant Barnes.




 

Cordially,

Director Margaret Carter

 

* * *

 

“I’ve been thinking about all this supernatural stuff we’re always getting involved with” Morita mused as he gulped down another drink. “If all of that has turned out to be real, does this mean Schmidt could actually have been our version of the devil?”

The rest of the Commandos looked up at him in a mixture of confusion, speculation, and on Steve’s part, exasperation. The serum didn’t change whether a person was human, it just magnified the qualities they already had, although in Schmidt’s case those traits had proved to be mostly malicious intent that was exacerbated much to the world’s chagrin.

“He certainly could’ve been a sight straight outta hell” Dugan replied heartily.

“He also damned well got his wings clipped when Cap took him out” Gabe added with a wink at Steve, who let his face sink into his hands.

“Steve’s no angel though fellas, so that cuts into your theory a bit” Bucky countered with a grin.

“Sure looked like an avenging one when you fell off the edge, Barnes” Falsworth commented. “Fought like the devil too after that.”

Bucky blinked, letting the words sink in.

“Then what the hell are we?”

Dugan looked thoughtful, while Steve shot Bucky a look of disbelief.

“We’re the apostles sent out to shoot things up along with him and drink the good whiskey after it’s all done” he informed Bucky with a pat on the back. “You feelin’ holy enough for another round?”

Bucky snorted.

“I could outdrink you four out of seven and you know it. You’re on.”

“It’s your turn to buy anyway, Buck” Steve pointed out grinning, earning himself an elbow to the ribs.

“Never figured you high and holy types to be turncoats, punk.”

Steve snorted. “Like you said, jerk, I’m no angel. Just a man who wants you to get him another drink.”

 

* * *

  

When the SSR was completely disbanded in the early 1950s and its resources integrated with those of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the inevitable repurposing of certain wartime installations. The laboratory in Brooklyn where the super soldier serum had first been administered, still used an old antique shop as its cover, but was now used prevalently by Howard Stark as a testing facility, and in its deepest darkest corner, hid a glowing blue rectangular cube that had been discovered during the first and only expedition to locate Captain America following his crash into the arctic.

The cube, which Stark eventually concluded to be some type of gem, was placed in stasis and a location known only to a select few S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists. Unfortunately one of the few individuals to ever harness its power already knew of its presence in Howard Stark’s possession.

Arnim Zola had managed to wear down one of his superiors in the CIA and implore to them the importance of having the artifact securely under their control. It was this initiative and the resulting operation that led to the kidnapping of Howard Stark in 1961.

“They can’t hold him for very long without military interference or, in fact, our own” Peggy addressed them all during a strategy session. “It appears their interest in Mr. Stark is purely analytical. These individuals hope to coerce Mr. Stark into giving them the information they need and recovery is both immediate and necessary to prevent that from occurring. Gentlemen, I want two teams of agents for recovery and extraction. The recovery of Howard Stark is one of our highest priorities at this very moment.”

“Do we have an idea of the location?” Steve asked plaintively.

“Until a few hours ago we did not” Peggy informed him. “The latest intel indicates that Mr. Stark is being held in an underground facility located in the Cascade mountain range.”

“If I may Director what’s being done for our efforts in-”

“Is there a possibility of-”

“Back to the snow” Bucky muttered under his breath.

“-seems fruitless to attempt to infiltrate this rogue faction-”

That caught Bucky’s interest.

“-as much as I’d prefer a more tactful approach, these men are going to see through any ploy to gain entrance- ”

“Not if we aren’t who they think we are” Bucky interrupted.

“Sergeant Barnes, you seem like you have something to add to this conversation?” Peggy prompted, ignoring the agent’s disgruntled expression.

“What if we make them think we’re Hydra?” Bucky expounded on his idea. “We have the remaining weapons caches and what was left of their network before you shut it down in 1945. Hydra always claimed to have more covert branches operating chiefly to preserve its ideals and continued existence. So what if we pretend that’s exactly what we are?”

Silence reigned for a few moments and even Steve looked thoughtful.

“Have we any guarantee that these individuals might deal favorably with a stem faction of Hydra?”

This stirred on another hour long debate, but the seed had been planted and the Hydra cache in storage coupled with the intel Steve and Bucky had returned from Russia with denoting the possibility of holdout factions of Hydra, decided Peggy and her administrators on the validity of the proposal.

 

* * *

 

Bucky’s beyond surprised when the team gets in by using the standard “Heil Hydra” and an offer of support in Schmidt’s name…until the CIA agents return the salute and message from their leader. He hears the unspoken query running through the minds of the team’s leaders and tells them to continue with the mission and wait for word from Steve.

Twenty minutes later the team manages to disable the sentries, and radio dispatchers at the gate, and allow Bucky and Steve’s team to gain entrance. They scope out the inner levels and take out the remaining agents as quietly as possible, which it turns out was not enough, as the remaining forces nearly overtake Steve’s group.

Bucky manages to search a few of the lower levels before explosives start ringing out from the top levels.

“Steve! This place is wired and someone’s realized we’re here” he groused into the radio.

“Copy that, Buck. Have you located the target?”

“That’s a negative, Cap, but we’re on it. Just be sure to cover our asses once we do.”

“Roger that.”

The lower level is made up of reinforced steel in a tunnel-like structure that’s been integrated smoothly enough into the rocky catacombs for Bucky to assume it had originally been built as part of a working mine of some type. He could hear voices further down and one of them was definitely Stark’s. They cleared the rooms, mostly containing scientific and communications equipment, one by one until only the last and largest door remained.

One of his team, Agent Reynolds, kicked in the door and peered in.

Reynolds signals that the room has only two occupants and that one of them seems to be unarmed.

Bucky nods and leads the team in motioning for the others to fall back behind him as he uses his gloved left arm as a shield for any oncoming bullets.

“Well well, Sergeant Barnes. We meet again” a familiar voice drones, sounding almost cheerful. It’s one that sends a jolt down Bucky’s spine when he realizes why the enemy agents responded to their ploy so unbelievably. There really was a Hydra faction that had built itself up inside the CIA.

“Can’t say I feel that same” Bucky replied training his rifle on Zola’s position just behind Howard Stark, who was bound to a chair, gagged, and admittedly looked a little worse for wear. “How about you let us get what we came here for and I don’t use this opportunity to finish what we started during the war?”

“Why don’t you come a little closer so we can talk. We are old friends are we not, Sergeant?”

Stark’s eyes lit up with an intensity that told Bucky right away that Zola was armed. Bucky gave Howard a nod.

“Not until I know what kind of tricks you’ve got up your sleeve, _Doctor_ ” Bucky replied, hands calmly checking the position of his weapon. He motioned for the team’s second sniper, Williams to get into position next to him.

Zola responded with what could have been a derisive snort and snaked his hands out from behind Stark’s head. In his left hand was a syringe, in his right was a device that firmly resembled a detonator.

Small rocks began to fall inside the tunnel and Bucky realized they didn’t have enough of a timetable to negotiate this slowly. He motioned for Williams to take the shot and shifted his own position to keep the scientist’s attention on him.

White and McSharron stood ready to slip in and retrieve Stark once the target had been disabled.

“I believe it is I who can be making demands in this position, Sergeant-” Zola replied, breaking off as Williams shot the detonator out of his hand. He moved sideways and nearly jabbed the syringe into Stark, but froze mid-motion as Bucky fired two shots straight into his head with a semi-automatic.

The remaining agents dove for Stark, freed him from his bonds, and lifted him for transport. Bucky and Williams covered the rest as they rushed Stark to the upper levels, only taking a second to glance back at Zola’s bleeding form from where it lay prone across the floorboards.

“Target acquired, Cap. What’s your position?”

“Three degrees west of the gate. All exits secured, we’re prepared to cover you.”

“Roger that. We’re coming out now.”

Further explosions could be heard ringing out behind Bucky’s team as they cleared out. It appeared that Zola had triggered one of Hydra’s infamous self-destruct mechanisms even before they’d reached him.

The facility doesn’t crumble while they're inside, but the extraction team receives orders to pull out shortly after they clear the front gate, because the ground was becoming noticeably unstable. By the time they were packed into the two helicopters, half the entrance had already been covered by falling rocks.

On the ride home, amidst the immediacy of getting Howard field medical attention and ensuring he was stable until they could pass him off to more capable hands, Steve finally got a good look at Bucky’s expression. It was a mix of satisfaction, anger, confusion, and bitterness, but when Bucky looked up at him, Steve could also see the relief in his eyes. Relief that they’d managed to recover Howard without casualty, the teams made it through uninjured, and that Steve still was right there with him.

Likewise Bucky could read the look in Steve’s eyes, intermingled with worry and relief, the one that said they’d survived the mission.

 

* * *

 

The mission debriefing lasted hours and Howard Stark spent weeks recovering from abrasions, minor broken bones, and cleansing his system of whatever drugs Hydra had injected him with. While he eventually made a complete physical recovery, Stark’s time with Hydra had instilled in him a new paranoia about the blue stone.

“Alright Rogers, open and honest. I want full disclosure on whether or not you sighted this thing during the war” Stark insisted leading the way through lab ensconced beneath Brooklyn.

“You’ll know what I know” Steve promised.

“You’ll have to keep this between you and Barnes, remember?”

Steve nodded his assent.

“If you don’t actually need me, then why am I even here, Stark?” Bucky asked raising an incredulous eyebrow.

“Because Rogers couldn’t keep this from you if he tried” Stark barked back. “You’re the only person in the world who can read him like a book and it’d take more work just keeping you in the dark after I’ve let him in on it.”

Stark unlocked each of the vault’s security measures before carefully stepping inside to lift the lid on a steel-tight box. Steve’s eye’s widened considerably when he caught sight of it and his nervous reaction had already halfway confirmed Howard’s fears.

“That’s the stone that killed Schmidt” Steve confirmed, noticeably edging to get more distance between himself and the box, pulling Bucky back with him.

Bucky shot him a confused look.

“How?” Howard asked turning toward him.

“By touching it with his bare hands” Steve answered, causing Stark to take a sudden step back. “Shots of blue light came out of it, tore him apart, and then pulled in what was left of him.”

Bucky grabbed Steve’s arm, tugging him back even further.

Steve shot Howard a look of disbelief. “You’ve had this thing for sixteen years?”

“I found it during an expedition to locate your plane, thought it was just another artifact and decided it might be worth studying” Stark informed him. “Needless to say, I’m rethinking that decision. It’s not tempting a prospect if I’m going to get myself killed doing it. This thing’s going a few hundred feet underground encased in diamond, iron, and steel now that I know what it can do.”

“Good, because your vaults don’t have a reputation for being secure” Bucky observed.

Howard eyed him discernably. “This one kept the stone secure for sixteen years.”

“It’s a S.H.I.E.L.D. vault” Bucky countered.

True to his word Howard coated the stone’s case in diamond and metal before securing it far below an isolated region in one of his northern estates. He couldn’t risk a tremor in the earth’s tectonic plates revealing its existence were he to bury it in another region of the country.

 

* * *

 

“You think Hydra’s actually destroyed this time?” Steve wondered sipping his morning coffee.

Bucky snorted. “I wouldn’t hold my breath, punk. We didn’t get all of them during the raid, just enough of them. For now.”

“What happened in there, does it-?”

“Part of me is relieved that Zola’s gone and that I was the one to pull the trigger, to get it right, but another part of me is bitter that the bastard forced my hand on what felt like his terms” Bucky replied. “It’s not the first time I’ve felt like that, but I promised someone years ago that I’d try to keep my humanity no matter how gritty things got.”

“Who was that, Buck?”

“A man I met once before the war on a train going back to base” Bucky replied, taking a deep breath. “I only ever saw him just that once and while my memory’s still fuzzy, I know I found out who he really was back when we started with the Commandos. Told me to keep my humanity while I was over there, because he’d already seen just what Hydra and the Nazi’s were like.”

“Sounds like he had a hard life” Steve said curiously.

“And a hard death from what you’ve told me” Bucky added solemnly.

It took a few minutes for Steve to catch on.

“That train used to stop in Queens every day” he remembered.

Bucky nodded.

“He never told me his name, but it’s nice to know he wasn’t just another lost soul, that he had something to work toward after…” Bucky broke of and they looked grim for a moment. Erskine had also hinted to Steve at his past in Germany and fate his family had suffered, because of Schmidt’s desire to get his hands on serum.

“He gave us something to work toward, Buck, so that has to mean something.”

“Guess you’re right, punk, it’ll have to. Seeing as how you’re the result of it and still out there trying to save the world one brawl at a time.”

“I’m always right, jerk, and yeah it does. Just like everything we’ve worked for means something too, hopefully even long after we’re gone.”

 

* * *

 

In 1962 Steve and Bucky as members of S.H.I.E.L.D. attend a ceremony in Washington D.C. where a now retired Colonel Chester Phillips is presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President John F. Kennedy. Colonel Phillips had been peripherally involved with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s operations for the last decade and finally withdrawn his participation completely that year to accept a commendation from the President and retire to upstate New York with his family.

Peggy Carter saw this as a sign to expand S.H.I.E.L.D’s operation fully in New York City and, upon their request, allowed Steve and Bucky to return there to help run the new division. With the departure of their Captain and Sergeant, the Howling Commandos also found themselves spread throughout the country through a desire to return home and take up life within their home communities. They still managed to see each other once a year through holiday gatherings and a yearly revolving summer cookout with spouses, children, and eventually grandchildren.

Morita involved himself with the workings of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Sacramento division not far from Fresno, while Gabe did the same in his respective home state. They both became active in the Civil Rights movement and were joined by their fellow Commandos on several marches in Washington D.C.

Dugan returned to upper state New York and commuted daily to work with the same division as Bucky and Steve, who had returned to take up residence in their beloved Brooklyn surrounded by Bucky’s family.

The three of them are still there in 2011, though Dugan had aged and was a little worse for wear, no longer able to actively combat the enemy with hand-to-hand, when an Asguardian legend came to invade with an army of aliens calling themselves the Chitauri and a magic staff that could pierce even the fiercest hearts and bend them to its will, though not, it seemed, a vibranium shield, a metal arm, or a well-placed arc reactor.

“I lied” Bucky admitted as he and Steve fought off waves of Chitauri beside Tony Stark, their erstwhile troublesome yet strikingly intelligent nearly adoptive nephew, another Asguardian legend calling himself Thor, two reformed assassins turned S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, one of whom Bucky had trained personally who went by the name of Natasha, and the other, Clint Barton, who’d been trained by Phil Coulson, a former member of Steve’s team, and a former military scientist named Bruce Banner. “This _is_ a back alley brawl.”

The reference to that night at the Stark Expo all those years ago wasn’t lost on him.

“Appropriate” Steve replied. “Considering we really do have something to prove here.”

“Not to me you don’t, punk.”

“Hey, Uncle Spangles and Iron Grip. Get a room!” Tony broke in through their comms.

“Get yourself into another fight, Stark! You don’t seem busy enough” Bucky shot back with an exuberated grin that Steve shared. Then he lowered his voice and said “You know I’m in this with you til the end of the line, pal.”

Steve nodded, momentarily covering them both with his shield as shots rang out above them.

“Til the end of the line, Buck.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I had an interesting time writing this fic, fact checking the timeline, doing characterization, and writing Steve and Bucky into a time period they never truly experienced. I say truly, because Bucky was technically aware through some of it, but obviously not in a way that he was actually part of the world outside of following Hydra and possibly the Red Room’s orders.
> 
> I wrote this because I felt there weren’t enough alternate universe fanfics depicting Steve and Bucky actually getting home from the war instead, going on to live full-fledged lives, and getting to enjoy some of the benefits of they’d fought for.
> 
> Also, I will update the fic if and when we find out who Peggy Carter’s husband actually is by the end of the miniseries. His name will be mentioned in the section depicting Peggy’s wedding and characterization of him will be fixed if needed.
> 
> I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed reading this and that it’s brought you some cheer and entertainment during what’s probably going to be a very long winter. :)
> 
>  
> 
> Some minor footnotes (these are unlinked and unlabeled within the fic):
> 
>  
> 
> (1) Je fais ce que je peux! - I do what I can!
> 
> (This is the translation to Dernier’s line in French during the VE Day celebration at a bar in London.)
> 
>  
> 
> (2) Fact: Russia's intelligence agency was called the NKGB or The People's Commissariat for State Security for brief periods of time before and during February 2, 1941, was briefly shut down and then re-commissioned in 1943. The agency was responsible for the Soviet secret police, intelligence, and counter intelligence. It was active under this name until 1946, which is when the NKGB was renamed the MGB (Ministry for State Security). (This is meant as further clarification of the mention of the NKGB during Bucky and Steve’s time in Russia and the MGB sometime after they returned.)
> 
>  
> 
> (3) A party line, (mentioned while during the first break in at Steve and Bucky’s apartment), was a phone line that serviced an entire neighborhood or building, a system that was commonly in use up until the late 1970's and 80's.
> 
>  
> 
> (4) The mentions of Peggy Carter's mission from Howard Stark after the war are from the "Agent Carter" tv show, (more specifically the episodes: Now is Not the End, Bridge and Tunnel, Time and Tide, The Blitzkrieg Button, and The Iron Ceiling) with a few added bits since Steve and Bucky are actually there with her instead of where they are cannononically.
> 
>  
> 
> (5) The brand Ansen Gold (mentioned while Bucky and Steve are looking for bugs), are a company that made pliers and wrenches in the 1940's.
> 
>  
> 
> (6) There is a tape in the Smithsonian of an interview with Peggy Carter in 1953 where she talks about who her husband is, confirming the fact that she's married by then. She explains that he was one of a thousand men that Steve single-handedly rescued when he broke through a Hydra blockade that had half a battalion pinned down during a tremendous blizzard.
> 
> There is some speculation that this person could be a character already in Agent Carter, possibly Agent Daniel Sousa, but this hasn’t been confirmed. We do know that we’ll find out who it might be by the end of the mini-series, but until then it’s all just guessing. However, I will update the fic with a mention of his name in the section about Peggy Carter’s wedding if and when we find out who it is she married.
> 
>  
> 
> (7) The Cascades, (mentioned during the briefing about the location where Howard Stark is being held) are a mountain range that run through Oregon and Washington state.


End file.
